


Waffle House Jogs and Memory Walks

by FrostyEmma



Series: The Bucky Barnes Recovery Project [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romantic Friendship, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Team as Family, and there's a lot of domestic fluff. not sure how that happened, but food and movies and domestic fluff recovery are apparently also my jam, complicated relationships between Steve and Bucky and Natasha are my jam, they eat a lot of food and watch a lot of movies in the process of healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-29 06:19:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 42
Words: 204,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8478514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostyEmma/pseuds/FrostyEmma
Summary: A story of love, redemption, and pancakes. Cleared of all criminal charges as the Winter Soldier, Bucky is sent back to Brooklyn to live with Steve. With the help of Steve and Natasha, mountains of food and Netflix, and strange psychic journeys through his battered memories, Bucky slowly figures out what kind of person he wants to become.Even if that kind of person has inconvenient, developing feelings for a certain someone. Or two. And even if Hydra is still out there somewhere.(Come for the romance and recovery narrative, stay for the culinary education.)...A summary of Project Regenesis is provided in the end notes of the first chapter if you haven't read it or if you need a refresher. But you can go in cold, too.Now with Chapter 1 art by yawpkatsi!





	1. Shave and a Pancake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In the weeks following Bucky’s release from prison, Steve was very concerned with establishing a shaving routine._
> 
> _“Morning, Bucky. Did you shave?” Steve asked that first morning, as soon as Bucky came into the kitchen._
> 
> _“Hey, Buck. Shave yet?” Steve said on another morning, while standing at the stove with a pan full of eggs._
> 
> _One morning, Steve didn’t even look up from the toaster when Bucky came into the room. “Hi, Bucky. You shave?”_

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/149453653@N06/33408376603/in/dateposted-public/)

Art by yawpkatsi on tumblr

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**April 2015**

The apartment was dark, and Bucky - _the soldier_ \- quietly slipped out of his bedroom and into the hallway.

He had lived in Captain America’s home for the past several weeks; long enough to learn the man’s routines and habits, especially his sleeping schedule. The captain was taking an extended leave from SHIELD - for the _soldier’s_ sake, he had said - and that meant his hours were no longer erratic and unpredictable.

That meant he would be sleeping and unprepared at three in the morning.

The most cursory examination of the rest of the apartment confirmed this: the living room and kitchen were empty, pizza boxes stacked neatly next to the trash can, the shield propped up carelessly next to the coat closet.

The soldier moved quickly down the hallway toward Captain America’s bedroom, bare feet quiet against the cold floor.

Priority Objective: kill Captain America.

He eased the bedroom door open and slipped inside. Captain America lay flat on his back in bed, one hand resting against his chest. A book was on the bedside table - _Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control_ \- but it had been carefully bookmarked and set aside. He had not fallen asleep while reading it.

The soldier stood over the bed for a long moment. His hands shook, and he clenched them tightly enough that the nails in his organic hand bit into the flesh of his palm.

He would neutralize Captain America.

He would finally complete the mission he had failed so many times.

He would neutralize Captain America and complete his mission. Captain America would no longer stand in the way of HYDRA’s plans. The soldier would correct his many repeated failures and return to HYDRA.

Immediately.

The soldier’s breathing was unsteady. His hands still shook. He looked down at Captain America, sleeping so peacefully and unaware in his bed, and he…

He _hated_ Captain America.

Maybe.

No!

The soldier hated Captain America. Hated him. Captain America had stood in the way of HYDRA’s plans one too many times. Captain America had been the reason the soldier hadn’t been allowed his rest. 

The General had ordered the soldier to neutralize Captain America.

The soldier was not allowed to disobey orders.

He steadied his breathing. He slipped into the bed, one leg on either side of Captain America’s body. The captain stirred. Opened his eyes.

“Bucky…?” he started to say, but the soldier fastened his metal hand around the captain’s throat and squeezed.

Captain America’s eyes bulged suddenly, his face reddening and mottling as the blood and oxygen were cut off to his brain. Both the captain’s hands came up, desperately trying to pry the soldier’s hand loose from his throat, but the soldier’s bionic arm was stronger by far. 

All it would take was a quick clenching of the soldier’s metal fist. He could crush the captain’s fragile neck in that one motion, tearing through veins and arteries, trachea and larynx in a single stroke.

But the soldier hated Captain America too much to let him die that quickly. And so he would watch him strangle to death.

The captain’s eyes rolled back in his head. His hands scrabbled frantically - weakly - at the soldier’s unbreakable grip. And still he kept gasping out that word.

“Bucky…!”

The soldier hated Captain America.

Hated him!

_Hated-_

No.

No!

“No!”

The soldier threw himself backwards, and he tried to scrabble away off the bed, and his foot caught in a knot of blankets. He fell hard against the floor and rolled away until he hit the wall, and then his back was against the wall and his fingers were digging into his hair, and all the while someone was yelling “No! No! No!” and it took the soldier - _Bucky_ , wasn’t his name Bucky? Hadn’t that been his name all along? - it took the soldier a moment to realize he was the one yelling, and Captain America was dead, he had killed him, he had killed him, he had-

Something slammed into the wall - a door, a chair, what was it it? - and then hands were on him, grabbing him, shaking him, and a voice was saying, “Bucky, it’s me! It’s me!”

“No!” He wrenched away, back slamming into the wall. He lashed out blindly, and someone caught his hand, and still the voice was saying: 

“Bucky, it’s Steve! Bucky, stop it! It’s me!” 

“No, no!” the soldier - _Bucky_ , his name was Bucky, he knew his name was _Bucky_ \- opened his eyes, and there was Steve through a blurred, confused haze, crouching on the floor next to the bed.

Bucky’s bed. A tangle of blankets and sheets spilled from the mattress to the floor.

“No. No, no.” Bucky couldn’t breathe. His breath hitched in his throat. His eyes burned, hot and wet, then overflowed and spilled down his face, and he was vaguely conscious of murmuring the same words over and over again: “No, no, no.”

“It’s all right, Bucky.” Steve’s voice shook. “I’m here. It’s all right.”

“No…” Bucky said again, but then Steve’s arms were around him, pulling him tight against Steve’s chest, and even though Bucky hated him-

No! 

Stop that!

Steve’s arms were around him, and maybe Bucky was supposed to pull away, but he went limp instead and melted into Steve’s embrace. 

“It was just a nightmare, Buck.” Steve hugged him tightly, crushing him against his chest with surprising strength. “You’re awake now, it’s all right.” 

“It’s not…” Bucky started to say, but his voice hitched, and all he could do was swallow deep gasps of air and cling to Steve before he drowned. 

Steve’s hand was on the back of his head then, holding Bucky’s face against his shoulder while stroking his hair. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not… it’s not…” He couldn’t breathe. He dug his fingers into Steve’s back and clung to him. “I’m supposed to… I’m…” 

“What, Buck?” Steve didn’t loosen his grip or stop the stroking. “What are you supposed to do?”

“I’m…” Bucky choked on the words, but he had to get them out. “I’m supposed to kill you. I’m supposed to finish the mission.” 

Steve tensed momentarily, then hugged Bucky even more tightly. “You’ve said that before.” His voice had become even more ragged than before. “But you’ve never done it, because you and I both know you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to.” He closed his eyes against Steve’s shoulder. He was so tired. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t make me do it.”

“They haven’t succeeded yet,” Steve replied evenly. “And it damn sure wasn’t for lack of trying.”

Bucky said nothing. He just held onto Steve with his eyes closed, while Steve continued to stroke his hair. Gradually his breathing steadied into a gentle rhythm. 

After a while, Steve eased off of the hug and took his hand away from Bucky’s head. “Why don’t we go back to sleep now, Buck?”

Bucky nodded, and after a long moment, climbed back into bed and dragged the blankets over himself. Steve stood there for a while, looking down at Bucky. And then, without saying a word, he climbed into bed next to him.

After a minute, Steve spoke in the darkness. “Good night, Bucky.”

Bucky mumbled something that might have sounded like ‘good night,’ but he was already fading away. It was easier to sleep, he decided, when Steve was right there with him.

Maybe it was nice.

\---

In the weeks following Bucky’s release from prison, Steve was very concerned with establishing a shaving routine.

“Morning, Bucky. Did you shave?” Steve asked that first morning, as soon as Bucky came into the kitchen.

“Hey, Buck. Shave yet?” Steve said on another morning, while standing at the stove with a pan full of eggs.

One morning, Steve didn’t even look up from the toaster when Bucky came into the room. “Hi, Bucky. You shave?”

Every single time, Bucky wordlessly turned around and went back into the bathroom and shaved before reappearing in the kitchen. And every single time, Steve would smile and say “much better,” and then they would eat a big breakfast and go jogging around the neighborhood.

Sometime in the third week following Bucky’s release from prison, Bucky wandered in from the bathroom to find that Steve wasn’t in the kitchen making breakfast, but instead sat at the table, reading the Sunday paper. (He was the kind of old man who preferred a Sunday paper, Natasha had said, even if he read the news on a tablet every other day of the week.)

Breakfast wasn’t anywhere in sight. 

Steve lowered the paper when Bucky came into the room. “Hey, Bucky. Did you-”

“Yes,” Bucky snapped, because he had actually remembered to shave. Steve hadn’t even remembered to make breakfast. 

Under HYDRA, Bucky - only he had been the _soldier_ then, and he didn’t want to think too much about that - never had to remember little details like personal grooming. Showering and brushing his teeth, yes. But everything else? The technicians would decide when it was time for a shave or a haircut or for his nails to be trimmed, and they would strap him into a chair and-

He didn’t want to think about that either.

Breakfast clearly hadn’t been made though, so Bucky stood in front of the table, uncertain of what he was supposed to do.

“All right, Bucky.” Steve folded the paper, slapped his hands on his knees, stood up, and smiled. “You ready for a little exercise?”

Bucky looked at him sourly. “You forgot to make breakfast.”

“No I didn’t.” Steve smiled again. “I just thought we’d do it a bit differently today. Jogging first, then breakfast. Sound all right?” 

It sounded all right.

Wordlessly, Bucky turned and disappeared into his bedroom. A moment later, he stood in front of his dresser, picking over the small collection of clothing he didn’t remember acquiring. Natasha had gone out and bought them for him, Steve had explained, back when Bucky came to live with him in Brooklyn the first time. Only Bucky didn’t remember that. He could remember little bits - the taste of apple pie, strains of a song drifting out from a record player - but not much else.

He wished he remembered more.

A few months in prison, where it had been quiet and the guards had largely left him alone, had been enough time for him to realize that he had never been much of a man. Men had memories, and entire lives built around those memories. They had things they could talk about, and because he had never been much of a man, he wasn’t even sure what those things might be. He had a notebook given to him by the prison doctor, filled with disjointed fragments of memories, and not much else.

_Did you think you were a man?_

The General had said that to him once. When or where or why he had said that, he couldn’t remember - of course not - but the question had stayed with him all the same. And he had thought about that in prison as he read the books the guards gave him and scribbled in his notebook and walked around in the yard as part of his daily solitary exercise.

_My perfect killing machine…_

He shut the dresser drawer harder than he intended, but it didn’t crack, so it was okay. It only took him a moment to find what he needed - he had three long sleeved Henley t-shirts (in black, green, and blue), three pairs of jeans, and two dark flannels. He had a pair of sweatpants for jogging, which he was already wearing. He had a mix of underwear and socks, along with a black baseball cap, which he put on. He had one pair of shitty laceup boots that they had given him during his hospitalization in Avengers Tower, before his arrest and imprisonment, and one pair of sneakers.  
He had a hooded sweatshirt that had been Steve’s, and he pulled that on and zipped it up.

(He also had several pairs of pajama pants patterned with cartoonish designs, like rocketships and anchors, also from his stay at the Tower. Those had been chosen for him by Dr. McCoy.)

Dressed, he returned to the living room, and before long, they were outside and jogging a different route than the one they had taken for the past few mornings. Steve probably knew what he was doing though, so Bucky didn’t say anything.

They jogged for about forty minutes, taking a route that seemed to cross over itself a few times. Finally, though, Steve stopped.

“Here we are, Buck.” He gestured up at the sign he’d stopped under. It hung over a brightly painted storefront with big windows. 

The sign read ‘Wholly Crepe’.

Steve grinned. “What do you say? Feel like eating here?”

Bucky looked up at the sign again, then back at Steve. “Is this a hipster restaurant?” 

Natasha had mentioned hipsters; specifically how Brooklyn was full of them and how Steve was probably the king of all hipsters. Because he had been into records and newspapers before anyone else in the neighborhood had been born. (Either that, or he was just an old man, but Natasha seemed to prefer the first explanation.)

“Probably.” Steve raised an eyebrow at him, then chuckled. “But according to Natasha, we’re both hipsters, so you ought to feel right at home.”

Inside the restaurant, the crooning voice of a singer Steve identified as Frank Sinatra (“see, Buck? They’re playing Frank Sinatra. Definitely hipster,”) drifted out of the speakers mounted to the walls. Bucky wasn’t sure if the music felt familiar or not, but at least it didn’t feel loud or annoying.

It felt comfortable.

The waitress - a brown skinned young woman with streaks of purple in her hair and a nametag that read ‘Prisha’ - seated them in a corner booth out of the way of the windows, which suited Bucky just fine. Steve ordered them both a coffee and orange juice each, and then they took a few minutes to look over the menu, which featured seemingly endless varieties of pancakes and waffles and crepes.

When Prisha returned, Bucky ordered the biggest pancake stack on the menu - it was loaded down with pecans and strawberries and some kind of sticky-looking glaze and ‘sweet cream cheese.’ He also ordered a side of sausage and bacon. 

Prisha smiled. “You must be very, very hungry.” She wrote the order down on her notepad, then turned and smiled at Steve. “And what will you be... “ Her eyes widened. “Wait a second. Aren’t you…?” She looked back at Bucky. “And so you are…?”

Bucky looked away.

“I am, ma’am,” Steve responded quickly and quietly, his eyes shifting from Prisha to Bucky and back again. “But we’re just here for breakfast.” He smiled, leaned in towards her, and kept his voice low. “I’d be very happy if you wouldn’t mind helping us keep a low profile. Please?”

“Oh,” she said quickly, and then looked around the restaurant as if wondering who might have heard them. “Okay, sure. Of course.” 

“Thank you, ma’am.” Steve smiled back at her. “And if you could keep the coffee and orange juice coming, I’d be happy to autograph anything you might want me to autograph.”

That seemed to make Prisha happy, and Steve quickly ordered his own breakfast - a plate of rolled crepes with strawberries, three eggs over easy, and a large plate each of bacon and sausage. She hustled away, leaving the two of them alone at the table, and Steve breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sorry about that, Buck. I didn’t figure on getting recognized, but it looks okay now.” He reached across the table and set down his hand close by Bucky’s metal one, which was covered in a glove. “You all right?”

The media had been waiting for Bucky when he had first been released from prison, and they had camped outside the apartment building for days. He and Steve had mostly gotten around them by going through the secure parking garage, but people in the neighborhood still recognized Steve. And now they recognized Bucky, too, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do about that.

What he even could do about that.

“I don’t know.” He looked at Steve’s hands. “It’s different.”

“I know.” Steve shook his head. “When I first moved back, it took me a while before I could walk around the neighborhood without someone coming up to me every half a block.” He chuckled. “It’s better now - most of the people in the building just treat me like they would any other guy who lives there - but it was tough in the beginning.” He laid his hand on the back of Bucky’s left one. “I’ll bet you feel pretty overwhelmed right now.”

He was spared having to come up with a good answer. Prisha returned with two enormous glasses of orange juice and a large pot of coffee. 

“A whole pot.” She winked at Steve. “To minimize interruption.” She looked at Bucky, and he looked away before he could see if she would wink at him or not.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Steve left his hand resting on Bucky’s gloved metal hand, leaning in slightly as Prisha faded away again. “Hey, don’t worry, Bucky. It won’t be like this forever.” 

“Maybe,” Bucky said, and then spent a moment preparing his coffee - black, with two sugars - while Steve did the same. He set the spoon aside and looked at Steve. “When are you going back to work?”

Steve was on a leave of absence from his job as SHIELD director, in order to help Bucky adjust to life away from HYDRA. Which mostly seemed to mean dragging Bucky to to his therapy appointments with Dr. Levitt and his social work appointments with Darien Nash, along with constantly reminding him to shave.

Bucky sipped his coffee. “Just because you’re taking time off doesn’t mean HYDRA is.”

Steve grimaced. “I know. I’m going to have to go back soon.” He stirred his coffee, seemed to consider taking a sip, and stirred it again instead. “I’ve been in touch with Maria and the team, and they’ve been running down the rest of the list of the targets we’ve been tracking. But they’re going to need me back soon.” He took a sip of his orange juice. “Which means it’s going to be time for you to start work soon too.”

They had talked about that; Steve wanted Bucky to become a SHIELD agent and help track down the remnants of HYDRA, especially the General. He wanted Bucky to work as part of a team, instead of going off on his own and killing each and every member of HYDRA that he could find. Especially the General.

Steve had said Bucky was better than that.

Whether that was true or not remained to be seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand here it is! Three months after posting the last chapter of Project Regenesis! I wanted to get this up a lot sooner, but now is better than never. Feedback, questions, comments, and all of that goodness is warmly welcomed, wanted, and appreciated.
> 
> SUMMARY OF PROJECT REGENESIS
> 
> Two weeks after the events in Washington, DC, Bucky - calling himself ‘the soldier’ - breaks into Steve’s apartment and holds him at gunpoint, demanding explanations for a past he’s only beginning to understand. Steve calms him down, feeds him, cleans him up, and convinces him to spend the night. The next morning, Steve convinces Bucky to come stay with him in his Brooklyn apartment.
> 
> In the two weeks leading up to Bucky’s reappearance, Steve asks Natasha to help him translate the file she left in his hands. They learn that in 1945, Bucky was found and claimed by the Soviet Union’s Department X, headed by General Vasily Karpov and Dr. Fyodor Pushkin. He is brainwashed into becoming the Winter Soldier and used to great effect until something goes wrong in 1957.
> 
> Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, Bucky has another memory flash - which he calls ‘mind tricks’ - that sends him into a catatonic state. Steve snaps him out of it and then tries to discover who Bucky’s commanding officer within Hydra is. But Bucky has been conditioned against giving that information away.
> 
> In 1957, the file reveals that the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow Romanova had an affair. Natasha is unsettled by this information; she knew they had a past, but she had never been able to string dates together in her own head and realizes that her memories have been tampered with as well. They also discover that in 1963, the Winter Soldier assassinated President Kennedy. In 1973, Dr. Pushkin dies suddenly and is replaced by his protege, a young doctor named Dmitriy Stepanovich Rodchenko. The file dead ends in 1988 with the Winter Soldier being put back into cryostasis and Karpov dying. They still have no idea how the Winter Soldier ended up in Hydra’s hands.
> 
> Life in Brooklyn continues. Bucky and Natasha talk several times. The US government demands Steve take up directorship of SHIELD, and after a conversation with Sam and Wanda, he agrees. Steve tries to convince Bucky to join SHIELD and help take Hydra down. He also makes the mistake of giving Bucky the file, causing a violent and catastrophic reaction that Natasha helps bring closure to.
> 
> Meanwhile, it is revealed that Alexander Pierce was merely borrowing the Winter Soldier, and that his real Hydra commanding officer - General Aleksander Anatolyevich Lukin - is looking for him, along with Dr. Rodchenko. Bucky is recaptured and brainwashed into becoming the Winter Soldier again, and Lukin promptly puts him to work, plugging the leaks on US soil that Natasha’s information dump created. But Bucky’s conditioning is unstable and he breaks down several times over the course of the month. In a fit of rage, Lukin chokes Rodchenko and demands perfection out of the soldier, and Rodchenko realizes there is no way out of the dangerous mess they have created.
> 
> Rodchenko allows the soldier to remember that his name is James, and when a mission goes badly awry and SHIELD manages to take the soldier back into custody, Rodchenko turns himself in. Under interrogation, he reveals the full extent of what happened to the soldier - including another affair with the Black Widow - from 1988 onward. Under the Soviets, Lukin had been tasked with tracking down the remains of Department X, and that’s how the Winter Soldier ended up under Hydra control. The truth about Odessa is revealed, along with the full extend of how Hydra deliberately destroyed the soldier’s mind, and Natasha promises that if Rodchenko doesn’t find a way to help James, she’ll see to it that Rodchenko dies screaming.
> 
> Bucky is then arrested for his actions as the Winter Soldier. Bernie Rosenthal comes to his defense as his lawyer and fights to keep the case out of court. When she and Steve seem to be losing ground, they release portions of the file to the public, and the truth about the Winter Soldier is finally revealed. Steve also makes a deal with Rodchenko; in exchange for his testimony, he won’t be charged or extradited to Russia and will instead come to work for SHIELD. Charges are dropped against Bucky with the caveat that he is declared mentally incompetent for the time being, must participate in court-mandated therapy, and has to live with Steve for a period of one year.
> 
> Steve and Natasha bring Bucky home so that his healing can finally begin.


	2. Levitt and Nash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Thirty minutes to go._
> 
> _“I hate you,” Bucky said suddenly and loudly, “and I don’t want to be here.”_
> 
> _“Well,” said Dr. Levitt, and a small smile split his wrinkled old face. “There are worse ways to begin.”_

**Park Slope, Brooklyn**  
**April 2015**

The first week Bucky had gone to his therapy appointment with Dr. Levitt, he had sat in an armchair with his baseball cap pulled down low and said nothing at all.

The old man didn’t seem put off by that.

“My name is Dr. Isaac Levitt.” He rested his hands on his knees. They were wrinkled and knobbed at the knuckles, and there were dark spots here and there, but they didn’t tremble in the slightest. “I specialize in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Torture specifically. I’ve spent the better part of my career working with former POWs, helping them come to grips with their experiences and move towards a more comfortable life.” 

Bucky glowered at him and remained silent for the entirety of the session.

The second week, Bucky once again sat in the armchair and said nothing.

Dr. Levitt didn’t seem to mind at all. Instead, he spoke about a lot of things. Personal things, mostly; where he had studied (Columbia University), how long he had been practicing (nearly fifty years), even his favorite candy (peppermint, and then he had offered a bowl of them to Bucky). Somehow though he always managed to lead the talking back to the topic of therapy. And he kept trying to prompt Bucky to say something, though he didn’t seem to mind just talking and getting no response.

Bucky said nothing. He could wait the old man out. He was very good at waiting.

In the third week, Bucky sat in the same goddamn armchair in the same goddamn Park Slope office, with its shiny wooden floors and large plaid couch and matching plaid armchairs separated by a coffee table (with a goddamn bowl of peppermint candy on top), and listened to the stupid old man talk about whatever fucking thing he had decided to talk about that day. He glowered at the old man from under his baseball cap. His eyes slid to the clock on the wall.

Thirty minutes to go.

“I hate you,” he said suddenly and loudly, “and I don’t want to be here.”

“Well,” said Dr. Levitt, and a small smile split his wrinkled old face. “There are worse ways to begin.” 

Bucky glared at him.

Dr. Levitt sat back in his chair, hands folded on his knee, not bothering to reach over for a notebook or a pen, and simply looked at Bucky. “Why don’t you tell me what it is that you hate about me?”

Bucky continued to glare at him, but after a moment, said, “I’m only here because it’s part of the rules.”

He had been cleared of all charges against him and released from prison with a few court-ordered caveats (or rules, as Steve had called them). One: he had to go to therapy. Two: if he felt like going off on his own, he had to let someone know. Three: if he felt like he might try to hurt himself again, he had to tell someone first. Four: he had to live with Steve, at least for the first year. 

The rules were fucking stupid. Except for maybe the fourth rule, which was the only reason he was following the other ones.

“I don’t need therapy,” Bucky continued. “I don’t need social work. I don’t need any of it.”

Dr. Levitt nodded, his expression neutral once more. “I see.” He leaned forward and reached for a peppermint, not bothering to try to coax Bucky into taking one this time. He’d learned. “You’re following the rules, even though the rules don’t make sense to you.” 

He slipped the peppermint into his mouth and began to meticulously fold the wrapper, not taking his eyes off of Bucky. “If you don’t need therapy, and you don’t need social work, then what is it that you do need?”

Bucky was silent for a long moment. Too long, and he was starting to regret opening his mouth at all.

Nobody had ever asked him that question. 

He chewed on his lip. Finally he said, “I don’t know.”

Dr. Levitt didn’t smile at that. Didn’t put on a look of smug superiority and tell Bucky that see, he did need therapy after all. In fact, his expression seemed to flicker with sadness for a split second.

“If you don’t know what you need, can you think of what you might want?”

Bucky started to say, “I want…” but he trailed off and let his gaze wander to the window. Down below, a man pushing a baby stroller walked by. He probably knew what he wanted. And so did the two women walking hand-in-hand; they probably knew exactly what they wanted. Same for the lone teenager with the bubblegum pink hair and the electric blue earphones. 

Something like a frown settled onto his face. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. 

Dr. Levitt leaned back in his chair and looked at Bucky over the top of his glasses. “Then perhaps we have more to talk about than either of us might have thought.” 

Bucky was silent for the remainder of the session.

\---

**Brighton Beach, Brooklyn (‘Little Odessa’)**

“I could live here.”

Natasha brushed hair out of her eyes for the dozenth time and allowed herself a bit of frustration at not having tied her hair back on such a breezy day. But her frustration was short-lived, seeing as how she was getting to spend the afternoon with James.

She leaned back on the bench and looked out at the horizon. She and James were a block or so from the beach. Not on the boardwalk - neither of them would have wanted to be surrounded by the milling crowds that were already flocking to the beachfront area - but still close enough to see and hear the waves. The air felt fresh and briny, filled with the high whistles of seagulls and the constant hubbub of people going about their lives in the busy streets of Brighton Beach.

They’d made the drive from Rogers’ apartment out to Brighton in twenty minutes, which Natasha found she vastly preferred to the idea of spending an hour on the subway. Besides, when James rode pillion on her bike, she got to enjoy the feeling of his arms around her waist and his upper body against her back.

She glanced down at the bench beside her at the meal they’d gotten from a Russian deli they’d passed on the walk to the beach: hot and cold smoked mackerel; a large salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, and feta; stuffed cabbage leaves over polenta; egg-and-cheese-topped Georgian flatbread, and a large styrofoam cup of tea for each of them. 

They’d picked up the food and walked a couple of blocks toward the beach, finding a convenient bench that gave them a pleasant view of the waves. And now, in the midst of working their way through the meal, she had to admit to feeling a sort of contentment that was alien to her.

Alien, but enjoyable.

“I’d probably buy a place here if I wasn’t living at the Tower.” She glanced over at James and took a bite of the salad. She’d said the words in Russian; she always did when speaking to him, and he always responded in kind.

James had a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of Georgian flatbread in the other. With the way he had been working through the _khachapuri_ , they probably should have picked up a double portion.

He sipped the tea. “Why don’t you?” 

She picked up one of the _golubtsy_ , holding a napkin under it to catch what was bound to fall out of the cabbage leaf, and shrugged. “The Tower’s fine for now.” She smiled. “I don’t mind living in a place where my commute to work consists of a ride in the elevator.”

That being said, she knew that the Tower wouldn’t be fine forever. As well-appointed as her suite of rooms might have been, and as much as she didn’t mind the people she was surrounded by, she found herself missing her old apartment in D.C. sometimes. It had been an island, a sanctuary where she could escape from work, from people, from life itself when she’d needed to, and she would never have that at the Tower.

“And you?” She bit into the _golubtsy_. Miraculously, nothing spilled. “How’s living with Rogers?”

He finished off the piece of _khachapuri_ and took a long swallow of tea before replying. “Does it matter? I have to be there.” 

She raised an eyebrow in response.

He glanced at her, scowled, and added, “It’s fine.” 

Words weren’t necessary when confronted with such a ham-handed attempt at untruthfulness. She knew how much having James there meant to Rogers, and she had a fairly good idea of how mutual the feeling was. And so she waited.

James scowled into his tea. “He talks a lot.”

She chuckled at that. Anyone who knew Rogers even in the most detached, passing of ways knew that was true. The man had no inner monologue, no guile, and no subtlety; he simply spoke from the heart. At great length.

“That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one.”

And yet she couldn’t find it in her heart to poke too much fun at him. After all, he believed every bit of what he said. And that was never truer than when he talked about James.

“Do you do any talking of your own?”

A strange expression flitted across James’ face - confusion, uncertainty, perhaps even fear, all of which he tried to cover by forking a piece of mackerel into his mouth. He chewed for a long time and took another swallow of tea before replying. 

“Sometimes.” Another mouthful of tea. “At night. Sometimes.”

She took a sip of her own tea, still very hot. “About what?”

He frowned. Shook his head and stared into his tea cup. Finally he said, “They’ll make me finish the mission one day.” His frown deepened and his gaze drifted skyward. “It won’t matter that I don’t want to do it.” 

Ah. So that was it.

“It mattered last time.” She set down her cup and turned on the bench to look at him. “They tried their hardest to make you turn against us, and when it came right down to it, the fact that you didn’t want to was the only thing that mattered.”

Did she hear a bit of Rogers in the words she was saying?

He glanced at her. “Us?”

“Us.” She nodded, looking at him as though it should have been obvious. “Me. Rogers. The people trying to help you get away from them.” She bit down on _‘the people who love you’_ before it could make its way out of her mouth.

James said nothing to that. He poked through their lunch, finally settling on the remains of the _khachapuri,_ which he ate half of in two bites. Natasha started on a cabbage roll, and for a while, they ate in companionable silence.

Recovery was going to be a slow and laborious thing, Natasha reminded herself. And the best thing she could do for him right then was to be there for him as much as she could.

\---

**Brooklyn Campus of the Veterans Affairs Harbor Healthcare System**

“You don’t have to keep coming with me.” Bucky scowled at Steve, who didn’t even look up from the waiting room’s outdated, ragged copy of _Entertainment Weekly_. “You should be at work.”

Steve turned the page and folded the magazine back over on itself to keep the loose pages from falling out. “I’m here because it’s where I’ll be doing the most good.” He held up his phone. “And besides, I’m telecommuting. I’m scheduled for a conference call with Maria and Rhodey about five minutes after your session’s due to start.”

Bucky had nothing to say to that, and a moment later, the receptionist led him through the hallway and into the office of Darien Nash, MSW. 

“MSW?” That had been the only word Bucky had spoken on his first visit, and the receptionist had supplied the answer. 

“Master of Social Work,” she had explained. “From Virginia Commonwealth University.” As if it mattered, she added, “Best social work program in the country. You’re in good hands.”

That remained to be seen.

The office of Darien Nash was a cramped space of cinder block walls painted in hospital green, with a small window overlooking the parking lot. Nash, or somebody close to him, had attempted to decorate the room with crude, crayoned pictures - likely drawn by small children - and several photographs of what appeared to be a platoon of soldiers in desert fatigues.

Nash himself stood when Bucky entered the room. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with very dark skin that stood out against the powder blue of his shirt. The overhead light reflected off his bald scalp.

“Morning, Sergeant Barnes.” He smiled amiably and extended a hand across the desk. “Feeling any more talkative today than you were last week?”

Bucky slid his own hands inside the pockets of his jacket. Nash wanted him to talk? 

Fine.

He glowered at him. “Your office is ugly.”

Nash laughed at that, though there was no malice in it. “Well, you know, I did ask them to paint, but all I keep getting is ‘It’s not in the budget.’ So I figure I’ll just keep on putting more of my kids’ drawings up every day.” He shrugged, smiling. “It’ll cover up the puke green eventually, and it’ll save space on my refrigerator door at home.” 

Bucky said nothing to that.

Nash gestured to one of the two chairs on the other side of his desk. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

Bucky looked at him for a moment, but once Nash settled into his chair, Bucky did the same. “I don’t need to be here,” he said flatly. “I’m here because the court said I had to be here.”

For “a period of no less than one year,” his lawyer, Ms. Rosenthal, had explained right before Bucky was released from prison. He was required to have weekly visits with a therapist and a social worker. The therapist was meant to help him “make sense of” and “come to terms with” his experiences. The social worker was meant to help him “readjust to civilian life.”

It all sounded like a lot of bullshit.

Surprisingly, Nash laughed again. Laughed, and shook his head, and smiled across the desk at Bucky.

“Boy, if that doesn’t sound familiar.” He looked at Bucky with real humor in his eyes, not mocking, not condescending. “You sound just like Sam Wilson when he was first in here.”

Sam Wilson - guy with the wings. The one who had recommended Nash in the first place. “Same guy who helped me through it,” Sam had explained, and apparently that had been enough for Ms. Rosenthal and Steve to put Nash on Bucky’s ‘Team Rehab.’

Bucky glowered at him. “The court never made Wilson come here. It was this or extradition to Russia for me.”

And it was the only way Bucky would be allowed to stay with Steve.

“No, the court never made Sam come see me.” Nash nodded in concession. “But his C.O. did. And that carries a hell of a lot more weight.”

Bucky said nothing.

Nash settled back in his chair. “When Sam first came in here, he was a mess. He didn’t want to hear from me or anyone else about what he needed to do to get himself back on track.” He chuckled. “Told me he needed to be up in the air again where he belonged, not grounded in some low-budget shrink’s office. But he came here because he was supposed to, and after a while he had to admit he’d really needed to be here.”

Bucky’s gaze flitted between the crayoned pictures on the wall - one of them labeled ‘Mommy, Daddy, Angelica, David’ in crooked letters, with corresponding smiling stick people above each name - and the photographs of the platoon. Nash appeared to be in at least two of the platoon photos, grinning in his desert fatigues. One of the crayon drawings included a dog with stick legs, also smiling.

He looked away from the pictures and stared instead at the brightly painted coconut - a parrot with ‘Jamaica!’ emblazoned across the front - on Nash’s desk. “What do you know of it?”

Nash’s eyes followed Bucky’s all around the room, missing nothing that he saw. When Bucky’s eyes came to rest on the coconut desk ornament, Nash simply smiled. “Well, I do know about loss.”

He reached down and heaved his right leg up onto the top of his desk by the cuff of his trousers. Then, briskly, he proceeded to roll up the right pant leg.

“I was in Iraq in ‘04,” he said as he rolled up his pant leg. “We were security for the civilian contractors they brought in to rebuild everything that got blown up.” He shook his head. “Anyway, we were securing an area so the contractors could get in and do their jobs, and I took a bad step.” He cinched his pant leg up around his knee and gestured at what he had revealed.

Nash’s lower leg was a smooth metal shaft between the knee and the ankle. His flesh-and-blood leg ended just below the knee, where a complicated series of straps held the prosthesis in place.

“Antipersonnel mine,” he said calmly. “I was lucky. The quality control wasn’t so good for that one. If it had gone off the way it was supposed to, I wouldn’t be here. Neither would any of the guys who’d been standing close to me.” He gestured at Bucky’s left arm, though it was covered by his jacket. “Mine’s not as flashy as yours, but it gets me around. And I get that little bit of extra added realism when I dress up like a pirate for Halloween.”

For the briefest of seconds, Bucky wondered what dressing up like a pirate - or anything, really - for Halloween might be like. It seemed very…

He didn’t have the words for it.

“I fell off a train,” he said shortly, after Nash had taken his leg off the desk. “I don’t remember it. They told me. The doctors.”

Dr. Pushkin had told him that he had been in a terrible accident, and Comrade General Karpov had said the same thing. And so had Steve, only he also said that Dr. Pushkin and the old man had lied to him about everything else. Everything, even down to where Bucky had been born. (Brooklyn, not Russia. In 1917, not any other date that they might have ever made up.)

He pushed the thought aside.

“In the hospital, they told me.” He had probably already said too much. He let his gaze drift out toward the window, only there wasn’t much to see at all.

“From what I hear, they told you a lot of things that weren’t true.” Nash rested his elbows on the desk. “Or things that were only partially true. It was their way of keeping you on a short chain.”

His eyes snapped back to Nash. “You know nothing,” he said instantly, and just as instantly wondered if that were true.

“I don’t know what it’s like to be you.” Nash held up his hands. “I don’t know every little thing about everything you’ve been through, true. I don’t think either of us do.” He raised an eyebrow. “But I do know that when you’ve been at war for a long time, it starts to become everything for you. So much that even when you finally do leave, you bring the war with you wherever you go.” He paused. “I don’t think you want that. I don’t think anybody wants that for you. So you and I are going to talk about some ways you might be able to let go of what you don’t want to carry around with you for the rest of your life.”

Bucky was silent for the remainder of the session.

\---

“Thanks, Rhodey.” Steve smiled and inclined his head at the 3D projection his phone was displaying. “I’ll set up a meeting with the Secretary as soon as there’s a hole in his schedule and brief him on the situation.” 

“We’ll add it to the calendar.” 

Rhodey’s image smiled back and faded out, leaving only Maria still there hovering over the coffee table in the waiting room. “So when are we scheduled to meet with the Russians?”

“Next meeting’s set up for 0800 Thursday morning.” Maria didn’t even have to look at any notes. “At the Russian embassy, naturally, but hopefully we’ll be able to fly them right out to the Helicarrier for the subsequent meetings.”

“If the first one goes as well as I hope it will.” Steve nodded. 

The Russian government seemed eager enough to cooperate with SHIELD, or at least with Steve in particular, but there was enough mutual distrust between the two countries to make everyone wary of getting too optimistic at the outset. Not that Steve wasn’t optimistic - he knew there were more reasons for them to work together than for them to fight one another - but he wanted to have his eyes wide open.

“That’s all then, Maria.” Steve looked up as the door swung open and Bucky came out into the waiting room. “Thanks for everything. Talk to you later.” He disconnected the call and got up, pocketing his phone and smiling at Bucky.

“So?” he said by way of greeting. “How’d it go this week?”

“It’s stupid.” Bucky blew past Steve, but stopped and waited for him in the doorway. “Your rules are stupid.”

“So, nothing new then.” Steve shook his head, still smiling. He’d get an email from Darien Nash outlining the session, much the same as he got updates from Dr. Levitt. And if there was really anything to worry about, Nash himself would have asked him to come in for a quick chat.

“Come on, Buck.” Steve held the door open for Bucky, and they walked out to the bike together. “That’s done for today.”

“But not forever.” Bucky stopped in front of the bike. “I’m driving.” 

Steve didn’t argue, though he did raise an eyebrow as he buckled on his helmet. “Where are you planning to take me?”

They peeled out of the parking lot on the bike, and it was a few blocks before Bucky replied. “Food,” he said shortly, and left the specifics to Steve’s imagination. 

Ten minutes later, Bucky pulled the bike into a restaurant parking lot. The cheerful sign on the front of the building proclaimed the place to be ‘Hansel ‘n Griddle.’ 

Bucky fed coins into the parking meter. He hesitated a moment. “I liked this one,” he said slowly, as if testing the words out. “When we jogged here a few days ago. I liked it.”

Steve tucked his helmet into the saddlebag. “I figured we’d find one you really liked,” he said as he put an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “Wait, was this the one with the marmalade stack?”

“Orange and mango marmalade stack.” Bucky’s eyes seemed to brighten, though maybe it was just a trick of the sunlight. “They also have the chocolate chip and banana stack with their homemade marmalade maple syrup.”

“What’s the thing with them and marmalade?” Steve steered Bucky through the door and into the restaurant. “Shouldn’t they be doing something with breadcrumbs instead?”

Steve felt happier than he had in days. Taking charge of the ride home and redirecting them to a pancake house had been a big enough step for Bucky to take, especially since he’d been worryingly passive for most of the time he’d been back home after being released from prison. But the look in his eyes, that hint of real enthusiasm and happiness, even at something as mundane as a pancake platter, was enough to make Steve want to jump up and down like a child at a birthday party.

The waitress came by, and Steve ordered the orange and mango marmalade stack, while Bucky went for the chocolate chip and banana stack (with homemade marmalade maple syrup, of course), though for a moment, they both seriously considered the ‘wild berries and fresh whipped cream waffle sandwich special’. They added a platter of bacon and sausages to the order, along with two giant glasses of orange juice.

“They have another restaurant in Manhattan.” Bucky pulled up the website on his StarkTech phone, then slid the phone across the table to Steve. A pause, then, “Maybe we could visit that one, too?”

Steve looked down at the screen. “Oh, it’s right on Pearl Street.” He grinned and slid the phone back over to Bucky. “We could jog to that one if you wanted. As long as you don’t mind jogging across the bridge, that is.”

It was wonderful in a way he couldn’t describe to see Bucky finally becoming interested in something. And he couldn’t help but find it funny that, of course, the something was food. Breakfast food, naturally.

“You know, you always used to eat breakfast twice when we were kids.” Steve chuckled. “You’d eat what your ma gave you in the mornings, and then you’d walk over to my place and eat anything that was left from what my ma had made.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think you’d be happiest with a breakfast that didn’t stop till lunch.”

Bucky tucked the phone back into his pocket, a thoughtful expression on his face. “That sounds…” His eyes widened suddenly. “You… you used to eat raw liver. Every morning. You would eat raw liver.” His gaze dropped back to the table and quietly he said, “I know you did.”

Steve nodded vigorously, hope beginning to build in his chest again. The more Bucky remembered now, the easier it would probably be for his therapists (Jean Grey in particular) to help him recover. But equally importantly - or perhaps even more importantly - it would give him back those parts of himself that he’d thought had been stolen forever.

“I did. For my anemia.” He shuddered. “I hated the taste of the stuff, but I had to eat it every morning. My ma tried giving me liver juice a couple of times, but it made me so sick to my stomach that it wasn’t worth it. So it was toast and bacon and Ovaltine and a plate of raw liver for me every morning till I was ten.” He put on a fake-bright smile. “But hey, after that, it was just a shot in the arm every few days.”

Bucky looked at him. “That sucks.”

Steve stared at him for a second, surprised, and then burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. It had sounded so absurdly natural coming from Bucky’s mouth.

“Yes,” he replied. “Yes, it did.” He laughed again. “And you used to eat everything but my liver. You’d finish my bacon, you’d take the last piece of toast, you’d even steal my Ovaltine. But you always left the liver for me.”

The waitress came by with their food, which looked both wonderfully delicious and fabulously unhealthy, and they wasted no time getting started on it.

“So, Bucky.” Steve spoke around a mouthful of marmalade-covered pancakes. “Think you’d be up for jogging to the Manhattan place next week?”

It was a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With everything going on in the US right now, I certainly picked a difficult time to premiere a new fanfic. (And a sequel fanfic at that, making it an admittedly harder sell.) And yet, part of me thinks that art is still important. Enjoyment is still important. Self-care is definitely important. So here is my attempt at self-care, and hopefully reading this story provides a little bit of enjoyment and self-care for you too.
> 
> Feedback, questions, and comments are warmly welcomed, hoped for, and appreciated.


	3. Doxxed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Hello, Soldier.” The voice on the other end of the phone dripped with chilling malice. “I hope I haven’t reached you at a bad moment.”_
> 
> _Bucky froze._

**Manhattan**  
**April 2015**

“I’ve got to admit it.” Steve set down his coffee cup. “This was a great idea, Buck.”

They’d made the jog out to the Manhattan branch of Hansel ‘n Griddle, just as Bucky had suggested. What Steve hadn’t mentioned to Bucky was that he’d made plans for them to be joined at the restaurant by Natasha, Sam, Sharon, and Wanda. Steve had wanted it to be a celebration of sorts, of Bucky’s recovery, of the progress he had made so far, though of course he hadn’t said so to anyone - especially Bucky. 

Natasha probably knew - she found everything out eventually - but she wasn’t saying anything. She just sat there behind her short stack of blueberry pancakes, a small smile on her face as she watched Bucky dig into his waffle sandwich special.

“Dude, seriously.” Sam speared another forkful of Belgian waffle. “This place is reminding me how badly I need a waffle iron.” He turned to Sharon. “Then I could make waffles for the both of us every Sunday.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow, a smile quirking over her lips. “Every Sunday?”

“Well…” Sharon looked down into her strawberry crepes, but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “Maybe not _every_ Sunday.”

“Every Sunday for the past couple of weeks, anyway.” Sam grinned and took a sip of his orange juice. “And it’s always at my place. Which means my place has been an awful lot cleaner lately than you’d probably remember.”

Sharon nodded, her smile turning into something of a smirk. “It’s definitely gotten cleaner. Bed’s made and everything.”

Wanda looked at them over the top of her tea cup. “I even saw him borrow a vacuum cleaner last week.”

“No kidding.” Steve looked back and forth from Sharon to Sam and back again, a smile slowly appearing on his face as he considered it. Two of the best friends he’d made in the past few years deciding to get together? It seemed like a winning combination, at least from where he was sitting.

“No kidding.” Sharon rolled her eyes without heat. “It’s like college living all over again in the Tower. Everyone knows everything.” A beat, then, “It’s a lot swankier though.”

“Lot swankier.” Sam nodded in agreement, the grin never slipping. “I’ve got floor-to-ceiling windows. Up on the bazillionth floor, so, great view. And a digital butler, though he’s kind of like a shared commodity, isn’t he?”

“More like the ever-present reminder to put your clothes in the hamper,” Natasha chimed in, a small smile playing over her face. “Or a thermostat that asks you if you really want it set at seventy.”

“JARVIS does that for you, too?” Wanda shook her head. “Though he asks me in Celsius _and_ Fahrenheit. So I can learn, I guess.”

Sharon smiled. “That’s… polite of him? It? Him or it?”

“Tony’d say ‘him’.” Sam shrugged and took a bite of sausage. “And you’ve got to admit, he’s got too much personality to be an ‘it’.”

Natasha sipped her coffee. “You don’t call somebody with that sarcastic a sense of humor ‘it’.” 

Sharon laughed and held up her hands. “All right, all right. I have been thus schooled.”

As he listened to the banter flying back and forth across the table, Steve realized with some surprise that with the exception of himself and Bucky, everyone else at the table was currently living in Avengers Tower. Natasha and Sharon had relocated from D.C. to New York when he’d accepted the position of SHIELD Director. So had Sam, though he’d moved from Virginia. And Wanda - along with her brother, who was also living at the Tower - very simply had nowhere else to go.

“I don’t think I’d ever get used to JARVIS being in my space all the time.” Steve shook his head, smiling. “It wouldn’t feel like the space was my own. It’d feel like someone was always looking over my shoulder and about to offer a helpful suggestion.”

Bucky silently ate a forkful of waffle sandwich. He had said very little so far, but at least he had agreed to stay and eat with everyone. That was something, Steve decided. A place to start.

“You’re not wrong.” Wanda shrugged. “But I’m not going to complain about my large, temperature-controlled suite.”

“With robot butler,” Sam said.

Wanda nodded. “With robot butler.”

“And I’m not going to complain about living an elevator ride away from the friend I used to never get to see.” Natasha cocked an eyebrow at Sharon. “Whom I will apparently never again see on a Sunday.”

Sharon snorted into her coffee cup, then had to set the thing down in its saucer. “That almost went up my nose.”

Natasha smiled and ate a mouthful of blueberry pancake.

“You get used to it.” Wanda sipped at her tea. “My brother has met this girl - Crystal - and so I never see him anymore.”

“Is that bad?” Sam asked. “You miss your brother?”

“Oh no.” At Sam’s raised eyebrow, Wanda added, “It’s so much quieter all the time.”

Everyone got a chuckle out of that. Steve remembered thinking the first time he’d met Pietro that Wanda’s brother’s mouth was every bit as fast as the rest of him. And apparently, he wasn’t the only one who’d gotten that impression.

They ate and chatted for a while, the time drifting away from them as the conversation shifted all over the place and finally settled on work.

“So Barton, Natasha, and I are in Bismarck,” Sharon was saying over a second cup of coffee.

“Which I can’t even find on a map,” Wanda said easily.

“North Dakota.” Sam pulled out his phone. “You need to see this on a map. Let the record show there is no place HYDRA won’t go.”

Bucky frowned into the dregs of his coffee cup.

“Right, so we’re in Bismarck. Not even Bismarck.” Sharon snorted. “It’s like ten miles out, but there’s nothing around for miles. Except this big, obviously evil HYDRA factory.”

“It might as well have had the octopus logo on the side.” Natasha rolled her eyes. “I guess they figured it was so far away from everything that they didn’t bother trying to hide it.”

“Like I said, very obviously evil.” Sharon smirked. “Barton kept calling it the ‘evil HYDRA factory of obvious evil.’”

Sam tucked the phone back into his pocket. “We should put that on a shirt.”

“Ooh.” Sharon looked at Steve. “Can we? I think we should do that.”

“Why are you asking me?” Steve looked around at the rest of the table, a quizzical smile on his face. “I don’t think I can pull rank on you to stop a t-shirt from getting made. I’m just the Director, after all.”

Natasha smiled. “That would be a terrible abuse of power, Rogers.” 

“Yeah, I’m voting for the shirt.” Sam finished off his juice. “Absolutely.”

They started discussing colors for the t-shirt, and the conversation continued to flow from there. Somewhere in between Sharon and Natasha discussing their mission in Bismarck with increasing exaggeration and Sam taking an informal poll on t-shirt colors, Bucky pushed his chair back and muttered “bathroom,” to Steve before leaving the table.

“Okay, Buck.” Steve glanced over at Bucky, saw no distress in his face, and turned back to the conversation. “I still think an acid-green shirt is overdoing it, Sam.”

\---

Bucky hadn’t been lying about needing to take a piss, but that only took a minute, and then he was left standing in front of the bathroom mirror, hands pressed on either side of the sink.

If he didn’t go back to the table soon, Steve would come looking for him, and they would probably have to talk about it. Steve would want to know why Bucky didn’t want to go back to the table yet.

Bucky closed his eyes. Breathed deeply.

He wasn’t used to it. Wasn’t used to being around so many people who wanted to just talk and share a meal and do things together because they were friends.

Friends were for men, and he had never been more than a killer.

He opened his eyes and looked hard at his reflection for a long moment. In the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, his phone vibrated, and he pulled it out and looked at the screen. The number was unfamiliar, but he only had so many numbers programmed into the phone anyway.

Probably it was someone at either Dr. Levitt or Darien Nash’s office, but at least that gave him an excuse to go outside for a few minutes. Even if he didn’t want to talk to either of them.

He slipped outside, standing with his back against the brick face of the restaurant, and answered the phone. “Yes?”

“Hello, Soldier.” The voice on the other end of the phone dripped with chilling malice. “I hope I haven’t reached you at a bad moment.”

Bucky froze. 

His stomach clenched cold and nauseating, and it was a moment before he remembered to breath, remembered to scan the block for anyone who didn’t belong. Anyone on the street, anyone on the roofs, any suspicious looking vans.

Nothing.

He couldn’t seem to make himself speak.

“You know who this is, don’t you, Soldier?” The voice was sharper now, like a frost-covered razor. “Tell me.”

Bucky clenched at the phone and tried to make himself speak. Tried to make himself at least say the General’s name. The words stuck on his tongue.

“Oh, that’s right.” The smile in the General’s voice was obvious. “You can’t.” His voice dropped low, became a sly whisper. “I wonder how hard your friends tried to cajole my name out of you. Especially Captain America. And yet...” A cruel, mocking laugh. “Where is my name in all those newspaper articles about you?”

He would be sick. Right there on the sidewalk, he would be sick. A ball of ice and bile roiled in his stomach, and he clenched his jaw tightly to keep the wave of nausea at bay.

“What…” he started. Swallowed. “What do you want?”

He hated how pathetic he sounded. 

“You know what I want, Soldier.” The icy cruelty in the General’s voice curled back, an edge of red-hot anger beneath it. “The same thing I’ve wanted all along. The only question is how I get it.” 

“I’m not…” Again Bucky swallowed. Tried to keep the sick down. 

“Oh yes you are.” Heated rage boiled just under the surface of the General’s words. “You belong to me, Soldier. And whether you come back to me of your own accord and save me the trouble of having you collected or you choose to make it painful for yourself by defying me, I will have you back.”

“It won’t work.” Bucky gasped the words out, but he said them. “It won’t work anymore. They destroyed everything.”

That part was true, at least. Steve had taken Bucky up to the Helicarrier two weeks ago, and the Avenger called War Machine had blown up the mental recalibration chair with a missile before dumping the smoldering remains into the ocean far below.

That had been a good day, and the thought of it pushed Bucky forward.

“You can’t make me do anything,” he said quietly.

“Oh, can’t I?” The General laughed again. “All I’ve ever needed to do was strap you into that chair and put your little mind back in order. And I’ll do it again, as many times as I have to.” He paused. “Or did you think the chair SHIELD recovered was the only one in existence?”

Damp fear slithered down Bucky’s spine, and it took him a moment to realize he was shivering. He gritted his teeth, breathed heavily through his nose, but couldn’t seem to make himself stop shaking. 

“I can’t make you do anything.” The disgust in the General’s voice was palpable. “Just like I couldn’t make you do everything I wanted you to do before that imbecile Pierce got a hold of you? Or when my people found you in Brooklyn a few weeks after you failed your mission on the helicarriers? I can make you do anything I damn well please, Soldier, and you know it.”

He needed to run, needed to get as far away as quickly as possible, but his feet stayed glued to the sidewalk.

“My name,” he managed, “is Bucky.”

He hated himself for his own weakness.

“You are the Winter Soldier.” The General spat the words out angrily. “Nothing more. And the more you struggle to resist me, the worse you’ll make it for yourself.” A pause. “And for the rest of them.”

Bucky managed a glance through the window of the restaurant; everyone was still seated at the table, laughing and talking and completely unaware of what was going on.

“I don’t want…” he started, but then bit down on the words. The General had never cared what he wanted. He tried again. “Not them… I don’t… Not them.”

He could slip away right then. Just slip away and disappear.

“I broke through Stark’s security systems to place this call.” The General seemed to relish saying it. “If I can do that, Soldier, I can do anything I want. Now you have two choices.” His voice turned flat and cold. “You can come back to me willingly and accept your place and your role, or I can bring you back myself. And I promise you, you will regret making it difficult.”

Bucky bit down on his lip so hard, he tasted blood. “It won’t…” he started, but couldn’t seem to finish.

He had known all along that his time with Steve wouldn’t last. He had known that as much as Steve wanted Bucky to stay with him and get better, that it would never be anything more than a brief interlude.

He had just wanted a little bit longer.

“It won’t work,” he said softly. Helplessly. Stupidly. “Everyone knows who I am now. It won’t work.”

“Everyone knows who you are now, Soldier.” The cruel smile crept back into the General’s voice. “But who’s to say what anyone will remember after you’ve been in cryosleep for a few years? People have such short attention spans nowadays, after all.”

A sharp crack split Bucky’s ear, abruptly ending the call, and it took him a second to realize he had crushed the phone in his hand. He looked at the broken remains, and when he looked up, Natasha was standing in front of him.

“I…” He could hear the defeat in his own voice, but all he could think to do about it was tuck the phone back into the pocket of his sweatshirt, where she couldn’t see it. “I broke the phone. I broke it.”

\---

James’ discomfort at the table had been obvious to Natasha. Too many people, too much conversation, maybe even too much jocularity. It hadn’t surprised her when he’d excused himself from the table. It hadn’t surprised her when he’d slipped outside either, though she was evidently the only one who had seen him do it. 

She’d gone outside after him when it seemed like the phone call was running a bit long - just to check on him - and walked into something very disturbing. Despite his clumsy attempt to hide the broken phone from her, she’d seen how mangled it was. And he’d done that with his right hand, not his left.

“What is it, James?” She stepped close to him, tilting her head to the side to look up into his face. “What happened?”

“I broke the phone,” he repeated hollowly, his eyes wide with confusion and… was it terror? “It broke. I broke it.”

“It’s all right. Don’t worry about the phone. Just…” She fought the urge for a split second, then reached out and put a hand gently on his cheek. “Just tell me what happened.”

For a fleeting moment, he leaned into her touch before suddenly pulling away and looking up and down the street with wild eyes. “Don’t -” he started, then bit down on whatever else he meant to say.

“James?” Something cold settled in the pit of her stomach as he flinched back and looked around like a hunted animal. “You’re worrying me.”

 _Hostiles,_ she realized with sudden sickening certainty. He was looking for hostiles. 

She let her own eyes flicker around for a second or two, but there were no snipers. No snatch team, no covert operatives, no disguised getaway vehicles. James was in no danger. So what had spooked him?

She thought she knew the answer, but she asked the question anyway. Asked it with dread.

“Who was that on the phone?”

He looked away, and she knew.

“Lukin.” She felt her jaw clench reflexively as she contemplated it. 

James said nothing.

To have broken through Stark’s layers of security would have required an insane amount of work for any team of talented hackers on the planet, even Russian ones. Any cyberwarfare group capable of getting into Stark’s phones could have gotten into much more sensitive - and lucrative - places much more easily. That Lukin had expended such a massive degree of effort on something as petty as intimidating James told her everything she’d ever need to know about the man.

“He’s not going to take you back.” She said it with conviction, almost without thinking. And she realized as she said it that it was the first thing that had come to her mind. That losing James was the greatest fear she had. “You know the rest of us won’t let him.”

James allowed himself a moment to sag against the wall. Then he straightened, a resolute expression skittering briefly across his face, and met Natasha’s eyes. “I need to go home. You go back inside. Finish your pancakes.”

“And let you disappear?” A single snort of humorless laughter escaped through her nose. She knew exactly what he had in mind. He wanted to get as far away from everything as possible. To bury himself in the shadows again and keep running, so that Lukin could never find him - and neither could they. “You know me better than that, James. You’re not going anywhere by yourself, especially not now.”

His gaze flickered to the restaurant window before looking back at her. “I’ll be fine. You should go inside.”

“Fine?” She folded her arms and looked at him as she might have looked at a recalcitrant interrogation subject. Or at Rogers during one of his more pigheaded moments. “On your own? More likely you’ll be easier to pick up.”

She’d anticipated something like this. Lukin’s highest probability of success at this point would be to isolate James. While he was surrounded by people like herself, Rogers, Wilson, and the heavier hitters like Wanda and Colonel Rhodes, there would be no hope of reacquiring him without the use of massive force. But alone, confused, and afraid, James would be easy prey for the same sort of snatch team that had grabbed him a few months ago.

“Don’t you see?” Her voice softened slightly. “That’s just what he wants you to do. Remove yourself from a situation where he can’t get to you without going through the rest of us. He’s trying to goad you into making his job easier.” A slight pause. Then, an edge of dark triumph crept into her voice. “Which means he knows he can’t do it.”

“He…” James faltered, and Natasha wondered just how much he would even be able to force himself to say about Lukin. He’d been conditioned - deeply conditioned, likely to the point of injury - against giving any information away about his superior officers, and definitely about Lukin in particular. She wondered whether, if he tried to push himself too hard, he would end up going into a seizure of some kind. She’d seen it in interrogations before; a man she’d been questioning had once tried to kill himself by biting through his own tongue rather than overcome his conditioning.

James took a breath and tried again. “It’s been done before. When I stayed in Brooklyn the first time. Steve said.” A shadow crossed his face. “It can be done.”

She hated to see him so certain of his vulnerability, treating his recapture by HYDRA and Lukin as a foregone conclusion. She wished, in that moment, that she had Rogers’ gift of inspirational speech. But all she had was her own conviction.

And the fact that she would die before she let Lukin take him away again.

“Then why would he call to threaten you?” She cocked her head to the side. “Why bother alerting you if it were that simple for him to make a grab for you again?”

Several expressions flitted across his face right then: confusion, fear, even anger. “I don’t-” he started to say, then looked at her suddenly with wide eyes. “Your phone. Steve’s phone. Anybody’s phone. They could all be compromised. They could listen in, they could use it as a GPS, they could…” He caught his breath. “They could all be compromised.”

She cut him off quickly, before he could work himself up any further. “That’s Stark’s department. We’ll head right over to the Tower after we pay the check and let him know what happened. He’ll be able to deal with it.”

At the very least, he’d view it as an interesting challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Pietro's not dead. He probably won't show up in this story, but I refuse to accept his death, hence the name drop from Wanda. Just assume they dumped him in Helen Cho's cradle of life at the end of AoU, because that's what they should have done to begin with. Seriously.
> 
> Also, Wanda and Pietro are Jewish-Romani mutants, and I'll never accept otherwise. I mostly just handwave the existence of AoU anyway. I'm going with a *good parts* version of AoU. Whatever good parts you choose.
> 
> ...
> 
> Comments, questions, and feedback are warmly welcomed, encouraged, and hoped for.


	4. Security Measures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Steve put both arms around Bucky’s shoulders and leaned his head forward, so that his forehead rested lightly against Bucky’s. “Let’s go home, Buck. Let’s go back home, and I’ll call Dr. Levitt and we can work this out. What do you say?”_
> 
> _Bucky closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. Finally he murmured, “I don’t know.”_

**Avengers Tower**  
**same day**

“Well, no sense letting the molehill become a mountain.” Tony, hardly even momentarily deflated by the news that his state-of-the-art security system had been bypassed, held out his hand. “Give ‘em all to me. I was going to have you guys beta the prototypes for the next-gen phones anyway.”

“Why not just do a security upgrade on the ones we have?” Sharon raised an eyebrow. “Do we really need to replace them altogether?”

“Better safe than sorry,” Natasha muttered as she pulled out her phone. “Taking chances isn’t a great way to stay ahead of the game.”

“No half measures here.” Tony continued speaking as Steve and the others handed over their phones. “If one phone’s been compromised, no telling what might have happened to any of the others. And if there’s been any malware uploaded, I’d rather just shred them all and start you guys with virgin tech than waste time and effort trying to sanitize something that’s already been proven vulnerable.”

“So you’ve got new tech for us already?” Sam shook his head. “Man, how do you even have any spare time?”

“He doesn’t sleep. Ever.” Wanda leaned back against one of the cluttered worktables. “You can ask JARVIS.”

“Better yet, ask Pepper.” Tony grinned and gestured at the worktable off to the side. On it sat an open metal briefcase, inside of which were a dozen sleek-looking new phones - the prototypes, Steve guessed. And if he knew Tony…

“They’ve all been programmed to each of your preferential specifications.” Tony was already tossing the old phones into a metal box, held out by his one-armed robot shop assistant. “Contacts, ringtones, browser history, AARP dating hotline.” He tossed off a grin at Steve, who rolled his eyes as he picked out the phone whose Post-It note bore his name. “Just trying to keep the transition smooth.”

“What about the security?” Steve looked at the phone warily. “Do you know how they got in?”

“They’re Russian hackers.” Tony shrugged. “Got a lot of time on their hands and not much to do with it but drink vodka with the polar bears and screw around with rogue code.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Come to think of it, I should hire a couple of them. JARVIS?” He raised his voice slightly. “How come we don’t have any Russian hackers? Pull me up a possible hiring list, would you?”

“Shall I exclude those already serving sentences in the Russian system, sir?” came the dry response.

“Only if we can’t buy them out.” Tony frowned. “But do what your heart tells you.”

“Come back to the point, Tony.” Steve folded his arms. “If we don’t know how they got in the first time, how are we supposed to stop them from doing it again?”

“Oh, that.” Tony waved a hand dismissively as the robot fed the metal box containing their old phones into a square hole in the wall. “Brand new security protocols. Any attempt to introduce new code into the system triggers an aggressive little counter-upload of my own onto the offending OS. Not only does it flag the attacker’s location, but it’ll self-replicate fast and wipe out any and all partitions before any security system’ll be able to stop it. Plus it’s impossible to eradicate with anything short of an EMP.” 

“Too bad we weren’t running that on our old phones,” Steve muttered in frustration as Tony kept talking. “We’d have had a real shot at bringing Lukin out into the open.”

“It won’t be that easy.” Natasha’s voice was a low murmur. “Lukin used a burner phone, of course. I ran a trace on the number he called from, just in case, but I came up absolutely empty. The number doesn’t even exist anymore.”

Tony smiled, still talking. “I’ve been running the new security setup for a couple of weeks on my home servers, and I was thinking that if it works on the phones, SHIELD might want to tack another zero onto the end of my bank account for it.”

“If it works that well, I’ll sign the check myself.” Steve slid the phone into his pocket and looked over at Bucky, who was staring out the window at a distance from the rest of them.

“Hey, Buck.” Steve walked over to him, putting a hand gently on his shoulder. “Here’s your new phone.”

“Yeah.” Bucky took the phone without looking at it and stuck it in the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. He kept his gaze fixed out the window. 

Sighing heavily, Steve moved closer and slid his arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “Come on, Buck, Lukin can’t get to you now.” Natasha had filled Steve in on what had happened on the ride to the Tower, however briefly. “He was just trying to scare you. There’s nothing he can do to you, and he knows it.”

Bucky said nothing, but he didn’t pull away either, and that was at least a beginning. Steve tried to push aside the anger he felt toward Lukin and concentrate on bringing Bucky safely through this latest rough spot, but it wasn’t easy. In fact, he found that it was next to impossible.

“Bucky, I swear to God he’s not going to get you again.” He tightened his arm protectively around Bucky’s shoulders, as though he could keep him there by sheer muscle power alone. “He’d have to go through all the rest of us to do it, and that’s not a fight he’s capable of winning.”

For a long moment, Bucky said nothing. Then finally, “You don’t know that.” He still didn’t look at Steve.

“I do.” Steve felt the anger roll over him, too strong to hold back anymore. “He’s trying to win by intimidation. By frightening you into running away so he can catch you on your own like he did last time.” He shook his head, his fists and jaw clenching as he pictured Lukin’s smug face. “He’s a coward. All bullies are, and the one thing they can’t handle is being stood up to.”

Bucky stiffened and looked over his shoulder, as if suddenly aware of how many people were in the room. But everyone else was either engrossed in figuring out their new phones or in talking to Tony. Nobody was paying attention to them - except maybe Natasha, though she wasn’t making it obvious.

All the same, Bucky wrenched out of Steve’s arm. “I don’t want to be here,” he said, and blew out of the room without another word. Steve was right behind him.

“Hey, Cap,” Tony called after him. “Let me know how the phone works.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Steve called over his shoulder as he went out after Bucky. “Make sure you get them out to everyone else as well.”

“Two steps ahead of you,” Tony said, and then the door slid shut behind Steve, leaving him alone in the corridor with Bucky.

Bucky stood in front of the elevator, angrily poking the ‘down’ button. The button was on a digital panel, however, and couldn’t have offered much by way of a satisfying button mashing experience.

“Go back inside with your friends,” Bucky snapped without looking up. 

“My friends?” Steve was taken aback. “My best friend’s right here, Bucky, and I’m pretty worried about him right now.”

Bucky clenched his jaw and took a deep breath through his nose. “I’ll be fine.” The elevator door slid open and he stepped inside, then looked at Steve in visible annoyance when he followed. “I said ‘go back inside’. Go away.” He pressed the ground floor button on the digital pad.

“Not on your life.” Steve folded his arms and stared Bucky and his sour expression down. “Like hell I’m going to let you run away, especially after something like this. I’m taking you back home. We’ll call Dr. Levitt and figure this out.”

“Dr. Levitt?” Bucky couldn’t keep the scorn out of voice. “He’s an old man. What’s he going to do?”

“Maybe help you see a couple of different ways to look at this.” Steve raised an eyebrow. “His specialty is helping torture victims, after all. He’s probably been through this situation a couple of times.”

Again Bucky clenched his jaw and stared up at the ceiling. “He’s a stupid old man who doesn’t know anything. And I haven’t…” His breath caught. “I haven’t been…” He swallowed, shook his head. “He doesn’t know anything.”

“Come on, Buck.” Steve felt his heart sink as he looked at Bucky. He’d been so badly treated for such a long time, by both the Soviets and by Lukin, that he didn’t even think of what had been done to him as torture. Any reasonable person would - or at least any mentally healthy person. Which Bucky wasn’t, as Steve was being almost constantly reminded.

“You know he knows an awful lot.” Steve sighed. “And he wants to help you. We all want to help you, but we can’t do that if you run away.”

“I’m not… I don’t want…” Bucky gritted his teeth, let out an angry huff of exasperation through his nose, but was spared having to think of a reply. The elevator stopped at the ground floor, the door slid open, and Bucky strode into the lobby.

Steve, naturally, kept pace with him. After all, Bucky couldn’t run away if Steve was running with him, could he?

“What don’t you want, Buck?” Steve jumped in front of him and kept pace, walking backwards to look him in the eyes. “You don’t want help, is that it? You’d rather go it alone and give Lukin exactly what he wants?”

“Stop!” Bucky himself stopped in his tracks, and so did Steve. “Stop saying - just… stop it. I…” He was panting with exertion now, or maybe anger and confusion. Probably all three. “You don’t- none of you know anything.”

“I do.” Steve reached out and laid both hands on Bucky’s shoulders, waiting for them to be slapped away in frustrated anger. “I know you’re in bad shape. I know you just want it to be over, and I know you’re afraid of Lukin.” His eyes hardened. “But I’m not, and if he thinks he’s going to get a hold of you again while I’m around, he’s in for a rude awakening.”

Bucky didn’t slap Steve’s hands away, but he did wrench out of his grasp and turn away. “You don’t know anything,” he said through gritted teeth, chest still heaving. “You don’t… you…” He took a shaking breath. “You don’t know how this works. You don’t know anything.”

“No, Buck, you don’t know.” Steve went right around to Bucky’s front again, looking him square in the eyes with a stubborn set to his face. “You don’t know how hard it was losing you before. You don’t know what I went through while Lukin had you for that month, or while you were in prison and I was waiting for them to take you away and bring you back to Russia. You tell me I don’t know? You don’t know what losing you again would do to me.” He barely stopped to take a breath. “And if you’re thinking of running away, then not only do you not know, but you obviously don’t care either.”

An expression of confusion skittered across Bucky’s face and settled on his brow. “That’s not… I… That’s not what…” He closed his eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t… I want…” He snorted in frustration and stared hard at the floor. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Well.” Steve reached out again to put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, much more gently this time, and offered a slight smile. “That’s why you have a legal guardian, isn’t it?”

“I wanted it to last longer. Just a little bit longer, even.” Bucky said the words so quietly, Steve had to strain to hear him. He didn’t look up from the floor. “I didn’t want this.”

“I know, Buck.” Steve sighed and moved closer to Bucky, wanting more than anything else just to get him back home. To bring him somewhere he felt comfortable and safe, so that maybe he could begin to think about things outside of a basic fight-or-flight context. “I didn’t want this either. But what do you think isn’t going to last? Nothing’s over.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what Bucky had meant by that, but he knew it couldn’t have been anything good. Did he mean that he’d wanted to go for longer without being reminded that Lukin was still out there? Or - much more likely - did he mean that he’d wanted to stay in Brooklyn with Steve for longer? Steve felt his throat begin to close as he thought of it. Did Bucky think he’d be forced to leave now? Was that it?

Steve put both arms around Bucky’s shoulders and leaned his head forward, so that his forehead rested lightly against Bucky’s. “Let’s go home, Buck. Let’s go back home, and I’ll call Dr. Levitt and we can work this out. What do you say?”

Bucky closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. Finally he murmured, “I don’t know.”

“I do.” Steve put a hand on the back of Bucky’s head, threading his fingers into Bucky’s hair. “So trust me. Let’s go home.”

\---

Steve made good on his promise to call Dr. Levitt, and Dr. Levitt agreed to see Bucky the next morning. Which meant Bucky would have to go and see him, unless he wanted to run away that evening.

He did and he didn’t.

He wanted to stay in Brooklyn with Steve and eat pizza from Turvino’s and watch _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_ on Netflix. He wanted to disappear and slip into the shadows so the General couldn’t find him or have reason to target Steve and Natasha or any of their friends.

It was only a matter of time, no matter what Steve or Natasha said.

And yet…

He stayed in the apartment. He scowled when Steve told him Dr. Levitt would meet with him tomorrow. He ate the pizza and the salad and the garlic knots from Turvino’s, and watched five episodes of _Star Trek_ , and let Steve talk him into going to bed and then pretended not to notice when Steve kept checking on him. And at some point, he fell asleep.

The next morning, Bucky woke up and showered and shaved (so Steve had nothing to complain about there), and when Steve had dark circles under his eyes at breakfast, Bucky pretended not to notice that either. 

And then, before long, Bucky was sitting in that goddamn Park Slope office, in the same plaid armchair he had sat in for the past three weeks, and there was nothing he could do about that if he wanted to continue to stay in Brooklyn with Steve. But that didn’t mean he had to talk, and he hadn’t for the past fifteen minutes.

“You know, a reaction like yours is actually quite common.” Dr. Levitt settled his hands on his knees and looked over at Bucky. “Particularly after such a lengthy period of maltreatment, and particularly when there is renewed contact with the source of the abuse.” 

Bucky glowered at him from under the brim of his baseball cap. 

Dr. Levitt pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. “But just because an impulse is common doesn’t mean it should be followed.”

Bucky glanced at the clock. 

Dr. Levitt peered critically at him through his glasses for a moment, then spoke again. “What I mean is this. Animals have what we call a ‘fight-or-flight’ response to danger. Depending on the nature of the danger, the animal makes a split-second decision: whether to stand and fight the danger if it thinks it can win, or to run away from it if it can’t. Now...” 

Forty-five more minutes to go. 

Dr Levitt continued. “This man, this General Lukin, has never been in a position of anything other than absolute power and unassailable authority over you. You’ve tried to fight him, and it’s never ended well.”

The words slipped out angrily before Bucky could stop himself. “What do you know of it?”

“I know what you’ve been through.” Dr. Levitt’s voice was calm. “I’ve read your file, and your friend Steve has told me all about what happened to you. And everything I’ve understood tells me that fighting him is not an option for you.” He shrugged almost imperceptibly. “And that only leaves flight as a possibility. You run away. You isolate yourself completely, and not only to protect yourself. You’re afraid that the people who care about you are going to be collateral damage if this man comes after you, and you want to protect them as well.” 

Bucky clenched his jaw, but the words wanted to come out anyway. “I’m not…” He gritted his teeth. “I’m not wrong.”

“In wanting to protect the people you care about? Certainly not.” Dr. Levitt shook his head emphatically. “We all want to protect the ones we love. Just as they want to protect you. Are they wrong, then?”

“They don’t…” Bucky’s whole body was rigid with tension. “They don’t… understand. They don’t…” 

He knew the General could do whatever he wanted. He could place calls on supposedly unhackable phones. He could track Bucky down in Brooklyn and reacquire him whenever he was ready. He had done it before, hadn’t he? Steve had said so, and Bucky couldn’t even fully remember that it had happened. The General could track Bucky down, reacquire him, and put him back into cryosleep, and that would be it. No one would ever find him.

That would be it forever.

He stared hard at the floor. “I… I knew it wouldn’t last.”

“I wonder if you’re giving your friends enough credit,” Dr. Levitt said gently. “You understand your situation from your own point of view. They understand it from theirs. And, if I may, I happen to think that running away would be a very bad idea on your part.”

Bucky didn’t look up from the floor. “What the hell do you know?”

“I know that voluntarily removing yourself from your only support network would leave you no way to recover from the damage that’s been done to your mind.” Dr. Levitt spoke evenly and matter-of-factly. “I know that taking yourself away from a group of people who want to help you would be shifting the entire burden onto your own shoulders. And I know that in the absence of people who can help you protect yourself physically, you’re likely to be a very easy mark for whomever wants to come after you.”

Bucky hesitated, took a deep breath. “He…” He choked on the General’s name. Gritted his teeth and tried again. “He can…” Another deep breath. “He can do whatever he wants. Whenever he wants.” He collapsed nervelessly in his chair, panting breathlessly and hating himself for it.

Fuck it. He reached for one of the peppermints in the candy bowl, unwrapped it, and shoved it into his mouth, glaring at Dr. Levitt all the while. Daring him to say something about it. 

“I wonder if that’s entirely true.” Dr. Levitt absorbed Bucky’s angry glare and returned a calm look of his own. “If he could have done whatever he’d wanted to do, why did he bother calling to harass and intimidate you when he could have simply had you kidnapped? It actually seems as though he’s made things more difficult for himself, seeing as how you and all of your friends are now going to be on alert for just such a thing.”

Bucky turned the peppermint over on his tongue and said nothing.

“In fact, I’d say this reveals a lot about this General Lukin’s mentality.” Dr. Levitt’s eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed. “When something can’t be accomplished by force, it may be easy to accomplish by exploiting fears. That’s how terrorism works - the goal is to frighten the opposition into compliance.” 

“That’s not always how terrorism works,” Bucky muttered through a mouthful of peppermint.

Dr. Levitt raised an eyebrow. “The easiest way for General Lukin to capture you is for him to find you alone. The easiest way for him to get you alone is to make you want to put yourself in that situation. And the easiest way to do that…” Dr. Levitt spread his hands. “Well, we know now what that is. The only question is how you are going to react - the way he wants you to, or the way that will keep you safe?”

Bucky said nothing.

He didn’t know what else to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. I hope today is a day of pie and turkey and minimal stress.
> 
> Comments, questions, and feedback are warmly welcomed, encouraged, and hoped for.


	5. Mission Parameters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _To tell the truth, it hadn’t sounded like anything Steve had ever wanted to hear, or ever wanted to hear again. There had been gunfire and then what seemed like a heated exchange in Russian that had turned into angry screaming and one of the voices being abruptly cut off._
> 
> _He knew what had happened._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the dialogue ["looks like this,"] then they're speaking in Russian.

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**April 2015**

A few days later, it seemed to Steve that Bucky had settled back into things after the phone call from Lukin. If nothing else, he’d lost that skittish, hunted look he’d worn for the following day and he hadn’t been looking over his shoulder all the time. Not obviously, at least. And for Steve, any slight improvement in Bucky’s mindset was something to be happy about.

He’d been sitting on the couch with Bucky, enjoying yet another episode of _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_ \- which Bucky had been binge-watching for nearly a week - when a priority call from Sharon broke in. And the evening very quickly went to hell from there.

Rhodey, Sharon, and Wanda had gone out to Nebraska to follow up on a lead from Tony’s HYDRA tracking algorithm, one that had led to a man named David Reynolds. As it turned out, Reynolds was not only tied to HYDRA, but also happened to be in charge of a large tech company in Lincoln, Nebraska, which was under the umbrella of the Kronas Corporation - Aleksander Lukin’s company. 

That particular evening, Reynolds was one of the many guests in attendance at the Apple Blossom Ball at the Capitol Beach Lake Marriott, one of the many city-wide events held annually in celebration of Earth Day. Rhodey had seemed to think that quietly arresting the agent alive would be no problem, especially with Sharon along as his second-in-command and Wanda there for added muscle and versatility. But things had rapidly deteriorated, and the situation was critical.

The SHIELD team had shown up at the hotel at around the same time as a group of Kronas’ private security forces, likely there on Lukin’s orders to assassinate Reynolds. Even worse, the team hadn’t counted on Reynolds’ extreme paranoia - he’d rounded out the attendance at the Apple Blossom Ball with his own personal security team, sprinkled in amongst the rest of the guests. Reynolds had panicked, sensing that both Lukin and SHIELD were coming to get him, and had used his security personnel to lock down the building and take everyone inside hostage. Which amounted to several hundred people.

Which meant Rhodey, Sharon, and Wanda found themselves pinned down not only by Reynolds’ guards, but a whole squadron of Kronas militia as well. Sharon had put in a priority alert to all SHIELD members, and Steve had gotten a call from Maria Hill.

“We’re on our way.” 

Steve ended the call with Maria, who had immediately dispatched a Quinjet to his location. Which meant it would land on the rooftop of the condo, giving the neighbors something to talk about for a week. But in the meantime, it would take fifteen interminable minutes for it to arrive.

Bucky looked up at him from the couch. “You’re getting back to work. Finally.”

“Not just me.” Steve disconnected the call and slid the phone into his pocket. “You’re coming along on this one, Buck. Now’s as good a time as any for you to get back out into the field, and we’ll need all the help we can get on this one.”

Bucky was silent for a long moment. He looked at the TV remote in his hand, then at the _Star Trek_ episode on TV, frozen in the middle of an action sequence. “I don’t… I don’t think...” He chewed on his lip. “This is a SHIELD mission. A team mission. With hostages. I don’t think… I’m the right guy for that.”

“I know you’re the right guy for it.” Steve sat down on the coffee table, which creaked ominously under his weight, reached out and laid a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t have asked you to be a part of it if I didn’t.”

Bucky needed to see it for himself. He needed to see firsthand that he could use the skills the Soviets and HYDRA had given him to be something more than what they’d tried to make him into. That his stealth and his marksmanship and his strength and his agility could be used to protect people rather than kill them. That he could choose to be whatever he wanted to be. 

A hero, not an assassin. Not the Winter Soldier, but a real soldier again.

“You weren’t always an assassin, Bucky.” Steve tightened his grip on Bucky’s shoulder. “You don’t still have to be, either. And I need you not to be if we’re going to take HYDRA down.”

For a long moment, Bucky said nothing. Then, “I could do this on my own.”

“We’ve talked about that.” Steve looked Bucky in the eyes, a look as hard as granite in his own. “You and me, and Dr. Levitt, and Natasha as well. And you know what my answer is.”

Bucky looked away. “Tell me again.”

“No way you’re doing any of this on your own.” Steve’s eyes, his voice, his whole body resonated with conviction. “No way I’m not giving you all the backup I can manage, because I’m not going to let you get captured again. Or worse.” He shook his head emphatically. “No way in hell am I going to lose you again. Not to them, not to anyone. Not again.”

Bucky seemed to go limp under Steve’s hand, but abruptly he said, “Where’s all my stuff?” Off of Steve’s look, he added, “What did you do with everything while I was hospitalized?”

“We got rid of all that.” Steve frowned. “I didn’t want anything connected with HYDRA for you.”

Granted, that had meant getting rid of a perfectly usable field uniform and several perfectly serviceable weapons, but it wasn’t like either of those things were hard to come by. There were plenty of field uniforms and usable gear on the Helicarrier, and after the mission, he could have Bucky fitted for a new uniform within a day or so. And as for weaponry, there was a pretty sizable arsenal aboard the Helicarrier. Bucky could have all the gear he wanted, and the timing of the mission wouldn’t suffer.

“But that’s not really important, is it?”

Bucky returned the frown. “Those were very good boots.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “They were HYDRA boots.”

“HYDRA didn’t make the boots, Steve.” Bucky scowled. “And they’re better than the shitty boots I’ve been wearing.”

“We can get you new boots.” He couldn’t in all honesty see what the problem was. “And if you don’t like the boots you’re wearing now, you can keep the boots I find you for field gear.” He paused. “What’s wrong with the boots you’ve been wearing, anyway?”

“Those shitty Timberland boots?” Bucky snorted. “They’re shitty Timberland boots.”

Steve had to chuckle at that. Leave it to Bucky to be so particular about his gear. “All right then. New boots it is.” He stood. “Quinjet’s going to be here soon. I’m going to suit up.”

As he was clipping the shield to his back, he heard the drone of the Quinjet’s engines as it descended toward the roof. He headed back out into the living room to find Bucky standing there looking upward at the ceiling.

“Come on, Bucky.” He put an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “Let’s get going.”

All of Bucky’s earlier uneasiness seemed to vanish once they were aboard the Quinjet. His eyes were clear and focused and everything about him was as steady as a rock. _Familiar territory_ , Steve realized. Bucky was used to pulling himself together for a mission, no matter what shape he might have been in beforehand.

He wasn’t sure how pleased he could be with that.

Once aboard the Helicarrier, they made their way to the bridge, where Steve found Maria, Natasha, Clint, and Sam already waiting in their field gear.

“All right, team, here’s the plan.” He stood in the center of the bridge, everyone else arrayed around him. “The hostages are scattered throughout the hotel. Rhodey and his team are trying to head off the Kronas militia, but they can’t keep them back for too much longer. So far, the hostages haven’t been hurt, but we don’t know how long that’s going to last. So we’re going in.”

He turned to Sam. “Falcon, you’re on insertion and rescue detail. You know what you’re doing, and you’re going to have plenty of support from the ground and the sky. Hawkeye.” He shifted his gaze to Clint, who was tightening his forearm guard. “You’re our eyes on the target. Any movement of hostages inside the building, you call it out to Falcon. Any shot at picking off the Kronas leaders or any of the hostage takers, you take it.”

He took a breath, then turned to look at Bucky and Natasha. “You guys are with me. We infiltrate the building and wait for Sam’s signal. Then we clear the hostages and secure the target.”

“Sergeant Barnes?” Phil Coulson appeared at Bucky’s elbow. “We’ve got a field uniform waiting for you.” A slight smile. “Boots and all. Captain Rogers said that was a priority. If you’ll just come with me...”

Without a word, Bucky turned and followed Coulson off the bridge. 

\---

“Here we are.” Agent Coulson led Bucky into what appeared to be a small changing room lined with metal lockers. A black field uniform hung in front of one of the lockers, a pair of sturdy boots on the floor beneath it.

Coulson cleared his throat. “And let me just say, Sergeant, that it’s an honor to have the opportunity to serve with you.” 

Bucky looked at him. “Okay?”

“I have your trading cards, you know.” Coulson shrugged. “Mint condition. Limited run. There weren’t many of them.”

“Trading cards?” 

Another shrug. “They don’t really look like you. The comics don’t either, but…” A small smile flitted across Coulson’s mouth. “Well, if you wanted to have a look at them later... Maybe sign them? Very appreciated.”

Bucky said nothing.

“Anyway,” Coulson said briskly, “I’ll give you a moment, and then we’ll go to the armory.” He pressed a button and the door slid shut, leaving Bucky alone. 

Everything fit. His new top was not made of leather, and instead seemed to be some sort of heavy Neoprene, with a collar that he could turn up and a front zipper that made getting into it very easy. He’d take the left sleeve off later, but it was perfectly serviceable for one mission. The boots strapped on perfectly as well. Someone had been paying attention.

He was dressed. He was ready. No reason to stall. The mission was important. 

And yet, he didn’t move. 

Why the fuck would anyone - even Steve - want him on their special team? 

No one had said anything when he had been on the bridge. Agent Coulson had seemed suitably… impressed? happy? Bucky had trouble reading emotions at the best of times, but Coulson didn’t seem put-off by him. And Natasha had winked at him. 

He shoved those thoughts aside. The most important thing was that Steve had mentioned Kronas. 

Apparently the General was still commanding the effort to burn out HYDRA in the US so that SHIELD couldn’t capture its members and use their intelligence to root out HYDRA abroad. Which meant that one of the commanding officers of the Kronas militia in Lincoln that evening might know exactly where the General was located. And there was a good chance that the commanding officer might also know exactly who the Winter Soldier was.

Which meant he could be made to talk. 

No more stalling. 

He stepped out into the hallway, and Coulson led him to the armory. For some reason, Natasha was there, waiting for him.

He glanced at her, then turned his attention back to the weaponry. [“Steve already said no sniper rifles.”]

Steve had said as much, and more than once, on the flight up to the Helicarrier. Which made weapon selection very easy. He knew exactly what else he would want.

[“Are you here to make sure I comply?”]

[“No.”] She arched an eyebrow. [“But would it make you feel better if I was?”]

[“No.”]

Choosing and holstering the various small arms only took a moment. He lingered over the various assault rifles and submachine guns for a bit longer than necessary, but settled on the Heckler & Koch MP5SD; it had a built-in silencer that also suppressed the muzzle flash, making it optimal for night operations.

[“But then why are you here?”] He adjusted the shoulder strap on the MP5SD, turned and looked at her. 

[“This is the first field op you’re going on with us.”] Again the arched eyebrow. [“I guess I wanted to see how you were feeling about that.”]

He felt the sudden, unnecessary need to check the SIG-Sauer pistol. Even though he had already checked it and it was in good working order and he was just wasting time. But he checked it anyway.

[“How should I feel?”] He didn’t look at her. The handgun needed inspection. 

[“I can’t tell you that.”] Her voice was soft, measured, but not cold. [“But I can tell you a couple of things you shouldn’t be feeling. Like self-doubt, or inadequacy.”]

Abruptly he re-holstered the pistol. [“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”] 

And before she could prod him any further, he turned and walked out of the armory. 

Of course she followed.

\---

“Look sharp, team.” Steve checked the front-view monitor in the Quinjet’s passenger compartment, which showed the city approaching fast. “We’re almost at the drop point. Falcon, you’re out first with Hawkeye. The rest of us will approach once we have acquisition.”

Natasha, off to one side, tightened the wrist straps on her Widow’s Bite while keeping her eyes squarely on Bucky. Steve found himself wondering how much her history with Bucky had been on her mind lately. Probably a lot, and he wondered what would come of it.

Natasha was probably wondering the same thing.

Behind him, the bay doors of the Quinjet opened, and Sam dove out into thin air with Clint in a solid waistlock, his wings unfurling as he dropped free of the Quinjet’s exhaust trail. And then the Quinjet swooped in toward a nearby high-rise, hovering a good dozen feet above the gravel surface of the roof, the three of them hustling out to take their places.

He positioned himself on Bucky’s flank, the better to keep a careful eye on him, and he couldn’t help but notice that Natasha had done the same.

“Talk to me, Hawkeye.” Steve whispered into his earpiece as he took his position. To his left, Natasha and Bucky silently crept through the scanty cover that the air ducts and various other rooftop projections provided. “What’s it look like?”

“Big damn mess, Cap.” He could almost hear Clint shaking his head over the secure line. “Hard to tell who’s who out there. And coming from me, that’s saying something.”

The conditions were less than optimal. The building was located along the Capitol Beach Lake waterfront, where dozens of party boats loaded with civilians were currently under sporadic fire from the windows of the Marriott Hotel. Rhodey and his team were trying to evacuate the people on the outskirts, but there weren’t enough places to go. Also, there were lights on in nearly every other building in the general area of the pier, evidence of more Earth Day parties that would be a prime source of additional hostages or handy collateral if HYDRA decided to make things messier. 

Clint continued. “Also, why are there fireworks? How is that Earth Day friendly?”

And - oh yeah - there were fireworks as well.

“Your guess is as good as mine. But we’ll be making some fireworks of our own in a minute.” Steve’s voice was grim. “Local PD’s being kept on the fringes. It’s just HYDRA and Kronas. What about the hostages?”

“Eyes on ‘em, Cap.” Sam’s voice came amidst the background noise of rushing wind as he corkscrewed through the air. “I’m gonna need a diversion if I’m gonna go in after ‘em.”

That would be more difficult than it sounded.

“All right, here’s the play.” Steve looked across to the hotel, the plan unspooling in his mind. “Hawkeye, I want a few of those window shooters taken out. Make it as flashy as you like. I want to get their attention.”

“I can do flashy,” Clint responded. “I’ve got a couple of new toys I’ve been wanting to try out.”

“Then use ‘em.” He smiled tightly. “Widow, you follow me. We’re going to head for the middle floors and draw their fire away from the hostages. You too, Bucky.”

A brilliant magnesium flare burst in one of the windows suddenly, bright enough to make Steve need to look away. A second later, a cloud of green smoke billowed from another window a few floors up. Several people in black battle fatigues hurled themselves out of the smoke-spewing window, plummeting dozens of feet into the water below. Clint certainly was enjoying those ‘new toys’, wasn’t he?

Steve took a deep breath. “Get us in, Natasha.” 

Natasha nodded and fired a cable at the side of the building, securing the other end to the nearby wall. “After you, Cap.”

“Hey, Buck.” He clipped a hook onto the cable and readied himself. “Remember when you made me ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?”

“And you threw up?” Bucky said distantly, eyes on the opposite building. 

He turned to look at Bucky, a huge smile spreading slowly over his face. “That’s right.” He reached out and clapped Bucky on the shoulder. The memories were still coming back. Fragmented, disjointed, incomplete, yes, but returning. And Steve hadn’t forgotten the bigger mission at hand. Hunt down HYDRA, sure. Root them out, scour them off the face of the earth, bring them all to justice, check. But Bucky’s recovery was every bit as important.

Steve hadn’t forgotten the last time they’d had this exchange, either. He’d never forgotten the horrible, shattering, soul-murdering loss he’d felt as he watched Bucky fall from the train. And so he wasn’t going to let Bucky out of his sight for one split second this time… 

“Are you awake, Cap?” Natasha stood there, a faintly-exasperated look on her face. “There’s still a mission.”

“That’s right,” he said again, gesturing towards the cable and the edge of the building with his eyes on Bucky and that smile on his face. “And you’re going first, Bucky.”

\---

Bucky had been eyeing the windows carefully, and judging by the thickness of the glass and the speed that they would travel down the cable, they would be just as likely to slam into the glass and fall straight down to the street than they would be to go through it.

Shitty start to his first mission with SHIELD.

He raised the MP5SD and fired a few rounds into the opposite window, just enough to create a web of tendrils that spread quickly across the glass. Satisfied, he shouldered the submachine gun, attached a clip to the cable, and jumped.

The journey was quick, though timing was everything. He unhooked the clip right as he crashed through the glass, then rolled to his feet and brought the gun up, only to greet an empty room. 

Steve and Natasha were right behind him. 

“All right, guys, we’re in.” Steve unclipped the shield from his back and looked around the room. “Hawkeye, Falcon, keep things moving on your end. We’ll give you all the support we can from in here.”

“Let’s head up.” Natasha clicked her Widow’s Bites into position on each wrist. “Cut them off from the street, maybe force them to-”

The door exploded off its hinges and hit the far wall, and a stream of… soldiers? security guards? _targets_... poured into the room. At least ten of them, none of them wearing the familiar uniform of Kronas’ private militia.

Didn’t mean anything. They could dress as anyone. No commanding officer in sight.

Expendable.

Steve and Natasha each dove off to a different side of the room, and there was a blur of motion as the shield knocked into one of the targets and rebounded off the wall. Another whirlwind of motion from Natasha which took another target down, and all of that was taking too long.

He opened fire and hosed the room, and a second later, all targets were neutralized. 

Find the commanding officer of the Kronas militia or find the primary target. Either would know where the General was currently located.

With that in mind, he moved across the room and into the hallway. 

\---

Steve had just caught the shield and was pivoting smoothly to fling it again after delivering a knockout spinning thrust kick to the chin of one of the guards, when a staccato burst of gunfire sounded from Bucky’s direction. The remaining guards dropped almost as one, every one of them with a bullet in the head or the chest. The ones who’d taken shots to the chest were still twitching feebly, thanks to their body armor, but they were less than half of the total number.

Steve looked over at Bucky as he quickly and methodically ejected the empty magazine from his gun and tossed it aside, slamming a new one home and chambering a round without changing his expression in the slightest. He wondered for a frightening moment whether Bucky would deliver the coup de grace to the survivors, but Bucky simply walked on purposefully towards the door they’d burst through.

Something to talk about when they were all safely back home…

“Get to the elevators, Natasha.” He tightened his grip on the shield. “Shut them down however you can. Permanently, if you have to, but I don’t want these guys all over the building and I don’t want them leaving it either.” He turned and hustled out of the room, following Bucky into the hallway. “We’re going up, Buck. To the floor where they’re holding the hostages. Sam’ll start evac while we deal with the HYDRA target.”

The hallway was another chaotic mess. Steve took a running start, holding the shield up to deflect the gunfire that suddenly blazed his way, and plowed right into a group of guards. He didn’t have time to see whose uniforms they were wearing; all that mattered was getting past them to the stairs. He shoved a knot of them backwards, all of them stumbling, some of them dropping their weapons, and he let loose with a flurry of kicks and punches.

\---

Bucky heard Steve shout something about ‘going up’, but the hallway exploded into activity, and whatever else Steve might have said was lost in a hail of gunfire. 

Again, the targets weren’t wearing the combat uniforms of the Kronas militia, but they were shouting in English. That didn’t necessarily mean they couldn’t be Kronas, but it was unlikely.

Expendable. And a waste of goddamn time. If Kronas got to the primary target first, they would neutralize him and then disappear. 

No! He wouldn’t let that happen.

He moved down the hallway, firing into the knot of guards currently engaged with Steve, and once they were all down, he was able to take out the remaining few guards. 

Eject. Reload. Chamber.

The overhead lights flickered rapidly and the entire hallway fell into darkness, illuminated only by the occasional neon burst of fireworks from outside. 

He crouched lower and moved quickly in the direction of the stairwell. 

\---

“Damn,” Steve muttered quietly before reaching up a hand to his earpiece. “Power’s out. Who cut it?”

“That’d be me, Cap.” Natasha’s voice came over the channel. “Got the elevators and the electronic locks all in one go. Backup generators are diverted. I’m heading up.”

“Right. See you up there.” Steve tapped the earpiece again. “Hawkeye, Falcon, War Machine? Anybody with eyes on the target?”

“Got him on 17.” Clint’s voice had taken on the calm, serene quality it always did when he was sighting down the length of an arrow at a target. “But it looks like they’re trying to move all the hostages there. Plus we’ve got firefights breaking out on a few floors above and below. Looks like the Kronas people are heading down from the twenties and shooting the place up as they go. They’re not going to be careful about hitting the hostages, I think.”

“Roger.” Steve bit back a curse. “Keep the target in sight, Hawkeye. War Machine, what’s your status?”

“Still keeping the civvies alive, Cap.” Rhodey came across loud and clear. “Those guys are taking pot shots at anything that moves out here.”

“Can the three of you handle it?” The last thing he wanted was a casualty list with innocent names on it.

“Walk in the park.” Rhodey’s confidence sounded in his voice as well as in his words. “But next time, I want in on the strike team.”

“I’ll pencil you in.” Steve smiled a brief, tight smile, then turned to Bucky. Except Bucky wasn’t there. 

“Bucky?” He scanned the hallway. “Where’d you go?”

\---

_“Got him on 17.”_

Bucky didn’t wait for the chatter in his earpiece to die down before moving through the hallway. He eased the fire door to the stairwell open and slid inside, the door clicking softly shut behind him. 

A burst of multicolored fireworks briefly illuminated the stairwell through the narrow glass window of the fire door, and he could see a bright orange 13 painted on the wall. The ‘Kronas people’ were heading down from the twenties. 

He had a second to curse his lack of a grappling hook, but he could move fast enough up several flights of stairs. He rounded the first several floors without incident; the hotel was big enough to have several stairwells, and the militia could be using any number of them.

At the twentieth floor, he stopped. The fire door was locked from the inside; he ripped it off its hinges, tossed it aside, and waited a beat, then moved into the hallway, submachine gun readied. 

Hallway empty. No bodies. Possible civilians hiding in some of the guestrooms.

If the target - Reynolds - had moved some of the civilian hostages to 17, then there was also a chance that he was using other hostages to move himself through the building. Which meant the Kronas militia were also moving through the building, trying to flush him out.

The hostages were a distraction for SHIELD then.

The best method for the target to escape would be via one of the party boats on the river. So it was possible that the Kronas militia would move toward the hotel’s dock.

Down the far end of the hallway, the latch to a stairwell fire door dropped to the thin carpeting with a dull thud. The door eased open.

Bucky dropped the submachine gun, pulled out a knife, and quietly yet quickly moved toward the fire exit just as two men in nondescript uniforms slid into the hallway, both carrying assault rifles that he could only faintly make out in the darkness. 

One of the men muttered, [“It’s like a fucking game of cat and-”]

He struck, coming up from behind one target and yanking his head back, pulling the blade across his throat before the man had time to react. The man dropped to the floor in a gurgling spray of blood. The other shouted something and lifted his rifle; Bucky grabbed it, twisted it out of his hands, and pushed him against the wall, rifle held like a bar across his throat. 

[“Where’s your commanding officer?”]

[“Up the stairs.”] The man’s eyes went wide with terror and his face began to turn red as the rifle dug into his airway. He wheezed, gesturing madly toward the fire door. [“That way!”]

[“Which floor? What’s his name?”]

[“They’re… they’re right above.”] The man struggled against the rifle, but Bucky was unmovable. [“Waiting for… all clear.”]

He pushed the rifle into the man’s throat just a little bit further. Enough to make him flail desperately. Pointlessly. [“His name.”]

[“Bez… Bez… Bezborodov.”]

Bucky pulled back and slammed the butt of the assault rifle into the man’s head. He dropped nervelessly to the floor.

Bezborodov. He thought he recognized that name.

He wasted a few seconds retrieving the MP5SD from down the hall. He could’ve taken the assault rifle, but that meant wasting even more time searching bodies for spare magazines. And Bezborodov and his soldiers would either come down the stairs at any moment to search for their comrades or they would abandon them and look for a different route.

Into the stairwell then. 

\---

“Bucky, come in.”

Steve looked up and down the hallway, but there was no sign of Bucky. He wasn’t responding over the comm channel either, though Steve had heard a few short, guttural bursts of Russian come through the earpiece. And since the number of people on the team who spoke Russian was exactly three, and it certainly hadn’t been Natasha or Wanda’s voice, it must have been Bucky who’d spoken.

Which meant that he hadn’t been captured; he was just choosing to head off on his own. Was he going to try for a high HYDRA body count? Was he just doing what he thought would be quickest and easiest in order to accomplish the mission? Or had he simply forgotten - or chosen to ignore - what Steve and Natasha and Dr. Levitt had told him about going off by himself?

It was an uncomfortable thought, and Steve didn’t like entertaining it for too long. When the mission was complete and they were all back home, that would be the time. Not now, when every second counted.

“Bucky, respond!” Steve headed towards the door at the end of the hall, shoved it open, and immediately flung himself backward as several fast shots chewed up the wall where his head had been a second earlier. He stumbled backwards as three more men - not in Kronas uniforms this time - poured out of the stairwell and raised their weapons again. He just barely got the shield up in time, and their bullets _spanged_ off of its impenetrable surface.

He got his feet under him and launched himself in a high leap over their fire. Before they could correct their aim, he’d flung the shield downward at a steep angle to knock their weapons aside. And when he landed, he drove both boot-heels into the sternum of the one in the lead, crushing the wind out of him and putting him down for the count. The second, in perfect range, got a spinning reverse elbow to his temple. The third got his gun up, but Steve was moving towards him by then, and he wound up being unceremoniously dumped on his head with a modified judo throw.

As Steve stood up, he heard Sam’s voice in his ear. “All right. Wanda, let’s get a shield up. Colonel, I need you to cover me. I’m going in after the hostages.”

So that was one more objective about to be completed. And Steve knew Sam could be trusted to get every last one of the hostages to safety. His credentials were impeccable, and he wouldn’t tolerate civilian casualties any more than Steve would.

“Bucky!” Steve picked up the shield and started up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “What’s your location?”

\---

Bucky wanted everyone to just shut the fuck up before they compromised his position on the stairwell. For a team of special operatives, they were fucking chatty. He considered pulling out his earpiece and stepping on it, but he’d need the damn thing later.

He crept up the stairway, submachine gun at the ready, making it to the 21st floor without anyone coming into the stairwell to greet him. He waited a moment, then ripped the door off its hinges and tossed it aside. 

They’d know his position now, and the sudden staccato clicking of rifles being readied, along with the hurried shouting, confirmed it.

He unclipped a stun grenade from his belt, readied it, and tossed it into the hallway. A second later it exploded in a blinding flash of light, and he darted through the door.

“Bezborodov!”

One man looked up from the six that were staggering in blind, deafened confusion. It was the work of a few seconds to dispatch the five of them, and then he had Bezborodov by the throat and against the wall.

[“Where is he?”]

[“Winter Soldier…!”] Bezborodov’s eyes went wide with fear and he scrabbled at his belt for a knife.

Bucky grabbed Bezborodov’s wrist and snapped it, ignoring his gurgling scream of pain. [“Where is he?”]

[“Who?”] Bezborodov’s voice was strangled with agony. [“Who? I don’t know who you’re talking about!”]

[“Don’t fuck with me!”] Bucky slammed the man’s head against the wall, more out of frustration than anything else. [“Where is… where…”]

The General. 

The General, where was the General, where was the General?

The words should have been easy enough to say, but he couldn’t betray his commanding officer. He couldn’t just give up his name. Not to anyone, not under any circumstances.

His eyes widened.

No.

[“Where…”] He gritted his teeth, tightened his grip on Bezborodov’s throat. [“Where is…”] He tried to force the name past his lips, but ended up gagging on it, and Bezborodov looked at him with hysterical terror and began to struggle frantically.

No!

He screamed something incomprehensible, then slammed Bezborodov’s head against the wall once more before snapping his neck and letting him drop to the floor like a broken doll.

Damn it!

He sagged against the wall a second later, breathing heavily, and after a moment, he spoke into his earpiece. 

“Twenty-first floor. Nothing here.”

\---

“It didn’t sound like nothing.”

To tell the truth, it hadn’t sounded like anything Steve had ever wanted to hear, or ever wanted to hear again. There had been gunfire and then what seemed like a heated exchange in Russian that had turned into angry screaming and one of the voices being abruptly cut off. 

He knew what had happened.

Even if he didn’t want to think about it or admit it, he knew. Bucky had just killed someone, and not in combat either. He’d fought, and then said something to the survivor. Had he found someone he remembered from HYDRA? Had it been one of his old tormentors? What had happened to make things turn out this way?

“What did you just do, Bucky?” He hated to have to ask the question, but if Bucky was about to suffer some kind of breakdown - or if he already had - then…

\---

Bucky hadn’t even asked Bezborodov where they were going. Maybe he had known where the primary target was located. Maybe they had been moving to intercept him.

Maybe Bucky had just fucked up the entire mission - his very first mission with SHIELD. Maybe he had fucked up everything and come away with nothing. Steve should have left him on the couch. He should have gone off on his own a few days ago. He should have-

[“James, are you all right?]” Natasha’s voice crackled in his ear. She hesitated a moment, then spoke again. [“You don’t have to try to find him yourself, you know. I’m going to help you. We all are.”]

For a brief moment, he said nothing and just allowed Natasha’s voice to wash over him. He found it strangely soothing.

[“Kronas commanding officer is neutralized,”] he finally said. [“I think the primary target is trying to leave on the river or through the parking garage. They’re going down, not up.”]

[“Good to know,”] Wanda said. Then softly, [“Stay calm, Bucky. We’re all here.”]

[“Then let’s get a move on.”] There was a smile in Natasha’s voice. Or was he just imagining it? [“The elevators are offline, though. We’re going to need another way down.”]

“Guys, come on!” Steve’s voice cut in abruptly. “I need to be able to understand what you’re saying!”

“Sorry, Dad.” Natasha sounded as playful in English as she did in Russian. “Reynolds isn’t going to the roof like we wanted. He’s heading for the ground or the water.”

“Dammit.” Steve sucked in his breath. “We need to get a fix on them now. Has anybody got eyes on Reynolds?”

“Nope.” This from Wilson. “But we’re evacuating the hostages. Looks like we’re gonna get them all.”

“Almost everyone’s off the water,” Carter said. “We’re almost clear there.”

“Definitely heading down, Cap,” Barton chimed in. “Reynolds and a group of guards. Bunch of hostages with them for insurance. Between 14th and 12th floors now. What’s our play?”

“We can’t risk any of the hostages getting hurt.” Steve spoke quickly. “But we can’t let Reynolds out of the building or there won’t be any hope of tracking him down again. We’re just going to have to intercept him before he gets to the water or the garage, and make sure we’re quicker off the mark than his goons are.”

Between the 14th and 12th floors… It would take too long to run laps down the stairwell. Bucky was fast, but the building had a lot of floor space to cover.

The nearest elevator was down the hall from the stairwell. He stepped over the assorted Kronas bodies and was at the elevator a moment later. It only took a moment to wrench the doors apart, and then he peered up and down the elevator shaft, trying to find the actual car in the darkness. He didn’t want it crashing down on him at an inopportune moment.

Into the elevator shaft then. 

\---

James was right where Natasha had thought he’d be - hanging from the steel cables in one of the elevator shafts. She caught up to him just as he was about to slide down.

[“Wait a second.”] She waited until James had turned his head to look at her, then flashed him the miniscule smile she used when she was about to do something incredibly reckless. [“I’m coming with you. I’ll tell you when to stop.”]

And with that, she leapt agilely into the elevator shaft, ending up on James’ back. She held onto his waist with her thighs and hooked an arm over his shoulder. She chanced a look up and down the shaft, but there wasn’t enough light to tell where the car was. They’d just have to hope that the car wasn’t between them and the 14th floor…

[“Let’s go.”]

She felt herself slip into freefall as sparks flew from James’ metal hand where the steel cable slid through it. She kept a tight grip on him as they plummeted, and it occurred to her that something about holding onto him made it feel almost as though she wasn’t falling at all. That everything was under control. Which wasn’t exactly the case, but it brought a good feeling to her anyway. Most things about being with him had always brought that feeling to her.

The sparks cast just enough light down the shaft for her to count floors. And at the 12th, she squeezed his shoulder. [“All right, stop.”]

James’ metal hand clenched on the steel cable, bringing them to a sparking, screeching halt. And almost before they’d even stopped completely, she had let go of his waist with her legs and kicked herself out towards the door, holding onto his shoulders with both hands. She wedged her heels into the crack of the doors and, with a lot more effort than it seemed like it should have taken, forced the doors apart with her legs. She wound up in a semi-split in the open doorway, her back to the hallway and her hands still on his shoulders, and as she turned her head to look out of the elevator shaft into the hallway, she saw a group of people hurrying out into the hallway. 

There were frightened screams, angry shouts, the metallic clatter of weapons being cocked.

Reynolds and the hostages.

She didn’t think twice. Pushing off of James’ shoulders with both hands and keeping her feet firmly wedged in the doorway, she flung herself backwards and into a bridge position, balancing on the tips of her toes and the top of her head. And in the same motion, she’d drawn both her Glocks and fired one, two, three precise shots at the guards. Upside down and awkwardly positioned as she was, her aim was still perfect.

She didn’t think twice. And judging by James’ look, neither did he.

The remaining guards were drawing down on her, and James pulled out his pistol and fired. One. Two. Three. Four headshots, and all the guards were down. The hostages scattered, screaming in terror.

She watched the results of James’ marksmanship admiringly, then lithely kicked her legs back over her head and walked over into a standing position. And no sooner had her feet touched the ground again than she was off at a run after Reynolds.

Reynolds stood there for a brief, stupid second, then turned and fled down the dark hallway.

She turned a corner after him only to nearly run full-tilt into another group of guards. Reynolds disappeared behind them, their weapons came up, and there was no sense stopping her momentum now that she needed it the most…

She charged at the middle guard and planted the sole of her boot right in his chest. Not pausing, she pushed off with the other foot and planted her other heel in his teeth, then pushed off with both feet. He crumpled backwards, taking out the guard behind him, and she turned a tight flip in midair to land in a crouch on the balls of her feet.

In the same fluid motion, she went to her belt with both hands and flicked a pair of stinger discs at the farthest two guards. They collapsed to the ground, twitching and convulsing, their weapons firing into the floor, the walls, the ceiling, anywhere but at her. And with her hands extended from the throwing action, she aimed a dart from each Widow’s Bite at another two guards - one dart apiece, sending them nervelessly to the floor. 

Reynolds, who had been watching this unfold with a look of sickened horror on his face, grabbed a gun from one of the fallen guards and fired a few wild shots down the hallway. Inexperienced as he was, the shots went wide of their mark, but his objective seemed more to dissuade people from following him as he turned tail and ran for his life.

He didn’t know James very well at all, did he?

That left two more guards to deal with: the one who’d been pinned under his fallen comrade and the last one standing, who cursed a blue streak and fired a split second too late. From her crouch, she balanced on one hand and pivoted her entire lower body in the air, putting all her weight behind the momentum of a swinging kick that struck the man in the elbow. She heard a damp snap and a cry of pain, and the rest of the man’s shots went wide. Getting her feet under her once more, she lashed out with a spinning backhand blow that connected solidly with his jaw, knocked him off his feet, and put him down for the count. And it was a simple matter to pluck his weapon out of the air and fire a single shot through the bridge of the nose of the guard on the floor, who was struggling to aim his own weapon at her.

\---

Bucky swung off the cable and landed on the floor, taking off at a run seconds behind Natasha. He rounded a corner, right into a knot of guards that Natasha was tearing through with a graceful, acrobatic ease, and for a stupid second, he found himself transfixed by her.

She always did amaze him.

He had no time to wonder where that stray thought had come from. Reynolds screamed and fired wildly into the knot of guards before turning and fleeing down the hallway.

Something let loose in Bucky’s head.

He blew past the guards - Natasha had that well in hand - and chased Reynolds halfway down the dark hallway until they were clear of the fracas behind them. Then he stopped, raised his pistol, and fired a single shot.

The bullet tore into the back of Reynolds’ knee, and he went down screaming incoherently.

They always tried to crawl away after that, and Reynolds was no different. He crawled himself a bloody trail down the hallway, Bucky stalking after him, until he caught up and kicked the pistol out of Reynolds’ hand. 

“No, no! Don’t! Please!” They always begged, too. Reynolds was no different.

Bucky grabbed Reynolds by the back of the collar and flung him into the wall, and the man would have collapsed in a heap had Bucky not pinned him against the wall by his throat.

“You shot at Natalia.”

“I didn’t- I didn’t mean- I didn’t.” Bucky squeezed his throat tighter, and Reynolds gagged, his eyes bulging. “Please- wait. What do you want? Money? I have money. I can-”

He really was no different than the rest of them. Bucky belted him across the face with the butt of the pistol, and Reynolds fell to the floor in a bloody, choking mess. 

He was no different at all. Better to just finish him and be done with it. 

Bucky took a step back, aimed his pistol at the man’s head, and fired.

\---

The smoke from her single shot curled from the end of the gun barrel, and through that faint wisp Natasha could see James sprinting after Reynolds. She hurried along the hallway after him, close enough behind him to see and hear everything that happened. The single shot to Reynolds’ knee. James’ angry accusation. The wet crack of metal on flesh and bone. And James preparing to put a peephole in Reynolds’ head.

She couldn’t let that happen. Not only because of the information they needed from Reynolds, not only because she knew Rogers wouldn’t want to hear of his friend killing a helpless man in cold blood, but because something made the idea suddenly unpalatable to her. She wouldn’t want to watch that happen, mainly because she knew James was doing it for her sake. Because Reynolds had fired in her general direction, and that had incensed him.

It was becoming harder and harder to ignore the way unexpected things like this tugged at her heart.

[“No!”] She lunged for the pistol, shoved the barrel aside. The shot shattered the concrete a bare inch from the side of Reynolds’ head, the rough stone chips peppering his face. Reynolds collapsed into a whimpering heap, and she kept her hand on the gun as she stood there in front of James.

[“Alive, remember?”] She looked into his eyes, saw the cold hard anger begin to soften, gently eased the pistol down, and gave him a small smile. [“I’m all right. Nothing to fear from a businessman with a gun he can’t even hold properly.”]

“Bucky?” Rogers’ voice came over the earpiece, wild concern in his voice. “What happened? Natasha? Are you-”

“We’re fine, Steve.” She kept her eyes on James’ as she spoke, gently but firmly pushing the pistol down until it hung by James’ side. “We’re both fine. Reynolds is in custody. A little worse for wear, but he’ll be able to talk.”

“Oh, thank God.” The relief in Rogers’ voice was almost tangible, and she had to smile at it. She’d known him to be concerned with every single one of their teammates over the years, but his concern for James was singularly touching. “What about the hostages?”

She looked back down the hallway. The group of hostages that had been with Reynolds and the guards had vanished when the gunfire had broken out, probably into one of the stairwells. “Alive but unaccounted for.” She frowned. “At least the group Reynolds had with him. What’s the story upstairs?”

“That’s all taken care of.” Sharon’s voice cut in. “All evacuated, along with the civilians down below. Hostiles down or in custody. Looks like it’s a wrap here.”

“All right.” Rogers was all business again. “Natasha, you and Bucky escort Reynolds to the Quinjet. Falcon, you and War Machine head into the building and sweep for those last few hostages. Good job, team. I’d call this a rousing success.”

 _So would I_ , she thought as another smile stole its way onto her face. And together with James, she hoisted Reynolds up to his feet and half-dragged him back down the hallway toward the exit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, concerns, and random conversations are warmly welcomed, encouraged, and hoped for!


	6. Panic Attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I know.” Steve hugged Bucky tightly, his eyes closed against the fear of losing him again. He shook his head. “I know you’re here now, Buck, but for God’s sake, I can’t lose you again. Do you understand that?”_
> 
> _“No.” The word was barely a whisper._

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**same evening**

The position of Director carried a lot along with it that Steve hadn’t been prepared for. There was a real difference, he was finding, between being a soldier - carrying out missions, leading a team in the field, and dealing with things strictly in the moment - and being a general. He’d taken the position because he’d known it was the only way to recreate SHIELD the way it needed to be, but he was discovering that he didn’t like certain parts of the job.

Like the paperwork.

The mission in Nebraska had wrapped up a little after midnight, and he’d been looking forward to heading home with Bucky to sit and talk about what had happened. Instead, there had been a mountain of documentation that needed to be processed in order to have Reynolds legally transferred to a holding cell on the Helicarrier. That on top of the debriefings, and the communications that needed to happen between SHIELD and local law enforcement, and the thousand little tasks that needed to be delegated. Thank God there was coffee - and Maria Hill - or he wouldn’t have made it through all the tedium. Especially since it was after three in the morning by the time he was done.

Bucky had waited for him though. Steve found him sitting next to Coulson on a bench near the armory, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a half-eaten donut in the other.

Coulson, however, appeared to be holding what looked like trading cards. “The first run came out in 1960 with the debut of the William Nasland-Jack Monroe television show,” he was saying. “A few years later, they modified the designs a bit, making the 1960 set even more of a rare find.”

“When I was a kid, it was baseball cards.” Steve smiled through his exhaustion. “Now it’s historical figure trading cards. What’s it going to be next?” He shook his head, chuckling, and turned to Bucky. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah.” Bucky stuffed the last bit of donut into his mouth, drained off the coffee, and tossed the empty cup into the trash can. 

“Thank you for your signatures, Sergeant.” Coulson tucked the cards inside his jacket. “We’ll look at the rest some other time.”

He and Bucky made it back to Brooklyn just before four o’clock, sagged onto the couch without even changing out of their field gear, and stared glassy-eyed out the window at the harbor. The sun would be coming up soon - not much point in going to bed. And that conversation still needed to happen.

“Hey, Buck?” Steve turned to look at Bucky. “We need to talk about what happened out there.”

Bucky glanced at him. “I signed all of the stupid cards. I also signed the weapons back into the armory.” He paused, then, “Most of them.”

“Most of them?” Steve raised an eyebrow and glanced at the pistol still in Bucky’s thigh holster. “How much did you keep?”

Bucky followed Steve’s gaze. “That. Couple of knives.” He slumped into the couch cushions. “Nothing much.”

“I don’t think anyone will miss a gun and a couple of knives.” Steve settled further into the couch. “Just as long as you didn’t bring the machine gun or any grenades with you.”

Bucky snorted. “Agent Coulson let me sign the SIG-Sauer pistol and the knives out. All I had to do was sign a few trading cards.”

“Phil would’ve let you sign them out anyway.” Steve shook his head and smiled. “The cards were just a bonus for him. But that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.” 

“Mission report? Again? I already did that with Agent Coulson.” Bucky seemed to wilt for a moment, but then he pulled himself together and sat up straight. “He called it a debriefing.”

“No, not a debriefing.” Steve sighed. “This isn’t formal or anything. The mission’s complete, and it was a success, and you’re okay, and that’s all great.” He blew out a breath and shook his head. “But Buck, you went off on your own. After everything we talked about, after all Dr. Levitt said, you ignored it and you went off on your own. Why?”

Bucky sank back into the couch cushions and looked at Steve for a long moment. He said nothing. 

Steve stopped himself from sighing again. He didn’t want to start berating Bucky, but…

“I lost track of you for a while.” 

He didn’t add that Bucky had stayed silent on the headset for far too long, or that hearing Russian in his ear had made him even more nervous, or that he’d listened to Bucky murder a man in cold blood without knowing who the man was, or why, or any of what had been happening. That was the worst part of it all: not knowing. 

“I didn’t have a fix on you when you went after the men from Kronas. I was worried about you, I didn’t know where you were or what you were doing, and I was about to just drop what I was doing to come look for you.”

“You all talk a lot,” Bucky finally said. “I didn’t want to give my location away.”

“Bucky, you disappeared.” Steve leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “I turned around and you were gone. I had to ask you where you were half a dozen times before you responded, and it made me worry. It made me do more than worry.” 

He clenched his eyes shut against the memory of finding the coffee cups on the pavement, of the sickening realization that Bucky had been taken and the knowledge of what was going to happen to him. “I remember what happened last time I lost track of you. I’m not going through that again, and I’m sure as hell not letting you go through it either.”

“This was different,” Bucky said steadily. “This was a mission. You wanted the target acquired.” Annoyance crept into his tone. “I acquired the target.”

“I know you did, Buck.” Steve sighed again. “Yes, the mission was a success. I’m happy that it was, and I’m happy it went as well as it did, but my point is, what if it hadn’t?”

Bucky sucked in his breath and said the words slowly. Carefully. “But it did.”

Steve shook his head. This wasn’t how he’d wanted this conversation to go. He hadn’t wanted it to become an argument, and it seemed well on its way to becoming one anyway.

“What if you’d gone off on your own and the Kronas men had gotten ahold of you?” Steve took his head out of his hands and looked over at Bucky with pleading eyes. “What if the whole point of their being there was to try to flush you out so they could capture you? Lukin can’t get you unless you’re alone, and you deliberately put yourself in that position! Why?”

Bucky pushed off the couch suddenly and was on his feet and by the windows. “I told you I wasn’t the right guy for this mission. You wanted me to come. I came, and the mission was a success, so what more do you want?”

“I want you to be smart about your own safety, damn it!” Steve was on his feet and over at the window in an instant. “I want you to stick with the team when we’re out there, because that was half the point of putting you on the team to begin with!” 

He tried not to let himself get any more worked up than he already was, but he couldn’t force himself to calm down. He tried not to be angry at Bucky, but he was afraid of what might happen, afraid of what Lukin might try to do, and afraid that Bucky’s own natural tendencies would make those things easier. 

“I wanted you on the team so you wouldn’t feel like you had to do any of it by yourself. So you’d always have backup. And so there’d never be another chance for Lukin to capture you again. And if you’re going to ignore what I said, what Natasha said, what Dr. Levitt and everyone else said, then you’re doing Lukin’s work for him!”

“Shut up!” Bucky growled, then his eyes went wide and he stepped back. Looked away. “I…” He was panting with anger or fear. Maybe both. “I quit your fucking team.” He turned and walked out of the living room, and a second later, his bedroom door slammed shut.

Steve stood there for a long moment, stunned. And then, all at once, a terrible fear took hold of him. What if he’d driven a wedge between him and Bucky? What if, because he hadn’t been able to keep his fear for Bucky’s safety from turning into anger, Bucky wouldn’t trust him anymore? 

What if Bucky disappeared that very night?

That fear drove him out of the living room, down the hall to stand outside Bucky’s closed door.

“Bucky?” He stood there in the hallway, his heart in his throat, and knocked. “Please don’t do this. I don’t want to fight with you.”

Silence.

“Bucky, answer me!” Steve knocked louder, the fear bubbling up in him again. Had Bucky already left? Had he just gone right out the window? Steve’s mind began to work overtime. He could call Natasha, or put in a call to the Helicarrier to have them start looking for Bucky. He could use every resource at SHIELD’s disposal…

More silence.

“Bucky!” Steve knocked one last time, terrible thoughts assailing his mind, and was in the middle of reaching for the knob when Bucky suddenly flung the door open.

He was still panting, his eyes strangely red and watery. Behind him, Steve could see the pistol and two knives on the dresser.

“I don’t…” Bucky started, trying and failing to catch his breath. He clung to the doorknob, his other hand braced against the doorframe, as if he’d collapse the moment he let go. “I don’t… know how… to do this. I don’t know how to do this with you.” 

Something in Steve’s heart let go at the sight of the look on Bucky’s face, and he was standing in the doorframe with Bucky before he knew it. He put his arms around Bucky in a clumsy hug. To his relief, Bucky returned the gesture a moment later, and then suddenly he was clinging to Steve, fingers digging into his back. 

“It’s all right, Bucky.” Though he wondered how long it would be, and how much effort it would take, before everything really was all right. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out together. Just don’t leave.”

“I’m not… I’m not leaving,” Bucky breathed. “I’m right here.”

“I know.” Steve hugged Bucky tightly, his eyes closed against the fear of losing him again. He shook his head. “I know you’re here now, Buck, but for God’s sake, I can’t lose you again. Do you understand that?”

“No.” The word was barely a whisper. 

“Well, it’s the truth,” Steve whispered back. “Bucky, if something had happened to you tonight, I don’t know what I would’ve done.” He felt a lump rise in his throat, swallowed hard, and continued. “I couldn’t handle it. Especially if I know I could’ve prevented it just by being there with you.”

He could see very clearly in his mind the way Bucky’s heading off alone during the mission could have panned out. A HYDRA ambush. The chair. The freezer in Siberia again. Everything good they’d accomplished wiped away in a single afternoon. Bucky destroyed again after all the work they’d done to rebuild him. And Lukin laughing sadistically over it all.

“I couldn’t handle it,” he said again, and his arms tightened around Bucky protectively. Almost reflexively.

Bucky sagged against him. “I’m not… I don’t…” He shook his head and continued to stand there, hanging onto Steve as if he would collapse the second he let go.

Dimly, Steve realized that Bucky was as exhausted as he was - probably more so. So why were they having this argument at four in the morning, when they ought to have been trying to catch as much sleep as they could? 

“Look, Bucky, it doesn’t matter what you think you are or aren’t. It doesn’t matter what you think you know, and it doesn’t matter what you don’t know. All that matters now is that you can’t jeopardize all the hard work we’ve all done getting you this far, and that means you can’t go running off by yourself.” He sighed, feeling the exhaustion start to creep in past the buffer of the coffee and the lingering adrenaline. “And I think we both need to get some rest.”

“Okay,” Bucky murmured into the crook of Steve’s neck.

Letting go of the hug wasn’t easy, especially since Bucky seemed liable to collapse the second Steve took his hands off him, but somehow they managed. Somehow Bucky got out of his field gear and into bed. Somehow Steve made it down the hall and into his own room, leaving a trail of clothes from his door to his bed, and the last thought he had before his head hit the pillow was _Please don’t leave me, Bucky…_

\---

When Bucky awoke, the clock on the bedside table showed that it was already two in the afternoon. He had slept ten hours.

Last night, he and Steve had argued, and Bucky had said some very ugly things to him. He had yelled at him to shut up. He had told him that he quit his stupid fucking team. He had slammed the door to his bedroom and only opened it back up after Steve had knocked multiple times.

A few minutes passed. Bucky pushed a hand through a tangle of stringy hair. He wouldn’t argue with Steve today. If Steve wanted him to talk to Darien Nash at his appointment tomorrow about what had happened, he would (at least try) to do it. 

A few words, anyway. He could say a few words.

He rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom and took a shower and even remembered to shave, which meant Steve would have nothing to complain about. Then he went back into his bedroom and pulled on his jogging sweats and went into the dining room for his glass of orange juice before afternoon breakfast.

There was no orange juice on the table.

Something cold twisted in his stomach.

He stood at the table and peered into the kitchen. Breakfast wasn’t on the stove; no pan of eggs, no platter of sausage on the counter, no toaster full of bread or waffles. Steve wasn’t in the kitchen.

The feeling in his stomach turned to ice.

He forced himself to move into the kitchen. There were no new dishes in the sink. There was no evidence of breakfast having been made at all. And Steve wasn’t there.

For a split second, Bucky’s breath caught in his throat, and then suddenly he was panting, quick little shallow breaths that made it impossible to breath, impossible to focus.

He turned around stupidly in the kitchen, once, twice, but Steve still wasn’t there, and he wasn’t at the table, and he wasn’t in the living room, and he was nowhere, Steve was nowhere, Steve was gone.

Steve was gone, Bucky had argued with him last night, Bucky had told him to shut up, told him that he quit his fucking team, he had slammed the door in his face, and Steve was gone.

He gripped the kitchen counter and tried to breathe, but his breath was coming faster and faster, and his eyes were blurring, hot and stupid and wet, and he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe.

Steve had gotten angry and left. Steve was mad that Bucky had slipped away during the mission, was mad that Bucky had yelled at him, had slammed the door, and he had gotten sick of dealing with Bucky, and he had left.

Steve had left.

His hands slipped off the counter and his knees gave out from under him, and suddenly he was sitting on the floor, back pressed against the cabinets and fingers digging into his hair, and he couldn’t breathe, Steve had left, Steve had gotten sick of him, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe.

“No,” a pathetic, tiny voice mewled, and it took him a second to realize that voice was his. “No, no, no. No.”

His eyes burned hot and overflowed, and he couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t see, and he didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

_Stop and think_ , a new voice murmured. One that sounded very much like Natasha’s. _Think this through._

But he couldn’t think it through. He couldn’t think. Thinking was for men, and he had never been more than a killer.

_Yes, you can,_ the voice insisted. _Think. Take a deep breath and think for a moment._

He took a deep, gulping breath, and then another, and he stared wide eyed at the floor tiles, and he lost track of how long he sat there. But finally his breathing steadied and he slowly loosened his grip in his hair.

Think. He needed to think.

Why…

Why would Steve run away from his own house?

That thought spurred him to grab hold of the counter and pull himself unsteadily to his feet. He pushed a shaking hand through his hair and took another deep breath.

Probably… Steve wouldn’t run away from his own house. If he were sick of Bucky, if he were too angry with Bucky to want to deal with him anymore, he would tell Bucky to leave and never come back. No matter what the court had said about Bucky having to live there.

The thought of that made his stomach clench up again, and for a moment, he thought he would be sick into the sink.

If Steve weren’t in the kitchen, then where was he most likely to be?

When Bucky was certain that he had control of himself, he pushed away from the counter and moved out of the kitchen, toward Steve’s bedroom. He eased the door open and slipped noiselessly inside.

Steve was in bed, sprawled on his back on top of the blankets, as if he had been so tired, he hadn’t bothered going to bed properly. Which was probably exactly what he had done.

Bucky exhaled slowly.

He was stupid.

Quietly he left the room, closing the door shut behind him.

He was so fucking stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My readership is small (but dedicated!) this time around, and I am grateful for every one of you. Thanks for your support and comments. It makes posting this story worth it.
> 
> As always, questions, comments, concerns, and random conversations are warmly welcomed, encouraged, and hoped for.


	7. Apology Toast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Steve’s hand came to rest on Bucky’s. “Come on, Buck. Talk-”_
> 
> _“There were photographs,” Bucky said suddenly. He looked up. “The guards showed me. There were photographs from the war.” Quietly he added, “There were photographs of us.”_

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**same morning**

Steve’s eyelids dragged themselves up, even as the rest of his body protested for just five more minutes, and he gradually became aware of his surroundings. A look at the alarm clock showed that it was already well after two in the afternoon. He must have needed that sleep even more than he’d realized.

He’d been so exhausted that he hadn’t even had it in him to drag the blankets up over himself. He’d even been too exhausted to shift around in his sleep, and so his bed was, for all practical intents and purposes, still made. Which was a good thing, he realized as he sat up and rubbed his bleary eyes, because the rest of his room was a mess. He’d shucked his uniform haphazardly on his way from the door to the bed, and there they still were in a trail that marked his exhausted passing. 

He thought he remembered leaving his shield by the front door, he dimly mused as he swung his feet over the edge of the bed. Just before he’d flopped onto the couch next to Bucky…

Bucky.

He stood up, all traces of lingering sleep gone in the split second it took his mind to present him with all the awful possibilities. They’d argued last night. Bucky had said he’d quit the team. He’d lost his temper and yelled at Bucky. And now…?

He bolted out the door to his room, still in his underwear, not bothering to put on clothes, and felt his stomach plunge sickeningly as he passed the open door to Bucky’s room.

Bucky could be anywhere. After ten hours, he could be two states away. Or out to sea. Or…

Or right there in the kitchen, as it turned out. Standing by the counter in his sweats, fiddling with the toaster. A small stack of toast sat on a plate on the counter, along with a jar of marmalade, and two glasses of orange juice were in their usual places at the table.

“Oh, thank God.” Steve felt himself sag as every muscle he’d been unconsciously tensing suddenly loosened in relief. He had to steady himself against the countertop. “I thought…”

He didn’t want to give voice to what he’d thought.

Bucky looked at him for a second, then turned his attention back to the toaster. “You didn’t make breakfast.” The toaster dinged, and he added two more pieces of toast to the stack. “So I… I made something.”

Steve looked at the counter and the table. For the first time, it registered to him that Bucky had laid out place settings exactly as he himself would have. The glasses of orange juice sat where Steve customarily set them every morning. Routine, he realized. Bucky was following the established routine.

Dr. Levitt had said something to that effect, he recalled. About how, for survivors like Bucky, routine became necessary because of its dependability. Since there was so little else in their lives that was constant and steady, they would look for consistency in unlikely places. And since Steve had overslept and disturbed Bucky’s routine, Bucky had tried to carry it on himself.

“You forgot the coffee.” Steve’s voice came out oddly choked past the sudden lump in his throat, and he moved forward to stand beside Bucky, putting an arm around his shoulders.

“I didn’t forget the coffee.” Bucky scowled - maybe at the intrusion, maybe at the comment - but that didn’t stop him from dipping a spoon into the marmalade jar and spreading a thick coating of the stuff over the first piece of toast. He didn’t shrug out of Steve’s arm either. “The coffee machine is… stupid.”

Steve couldn’t hold back the absurd snort of laughter that escaped through his nose. ‘Stupid’ seemed to be Bucky’s favored insult lately. 

“You couldn’t figure it out, could you?” Steve grinned and squeezed Bucky’s shoulders more tightly. “It’s okay. I’ll show you.”

As he set up the coffee machine and Bucky finished preparing the toast, Steve found himself dwelling on just how much having Bucky there meant to him. He’d done everything he could think of to convince Bucky that the apartment was home, that it was safe, and that Bucky’s very presence there made things better. At least he hoped he’d convinced him.

“I didn’t know I was going to sleep as long as I did,” Steve finally said after they’d sat down and gone through about half the pile of toast. “Last night was a lot later than I’d wanted it to be.”

“We came in late,” Bucky said through a mouthful of marmalade toast. He washed it down with a swig of orange juice. “And we... “ He frowned into the glass. “We argued.”

“I know.” Steve sighed. “And I woke up this morning afraid you’d gone.” He shook his head and stared hard into his coffee cup for a moment before looking up at Bucky. “I’m sorry I shouted at you last night. It’s just…” He sighed again. “I was afraid.”

Bucky drained off his orange juice, set the glass down, and reached for another piece of toast.

“I was afraid of what might have happened to you,” Steve continued. “I was afraid of what could happen if I wasn’t there to look out for you. I didn’t even know what was going on over the secure channel for most of the time, because I can’t speak Russian.” He shook his head helplessly. “And I hate feeling that way. Especially now that you’re back. I just…” 

He was at a loss for words, which was something he never usually felt. “I want you to be safe, and I want to be able to keep you safe, and if I can’t do that…”

Bucky finished off the piece of toast before replying. “In prison, I read some of the newspaper articles. The ones about me. The guards gave them to me.” He frowned. “They kept asking ‘Is this you? Is this really you?’”

Steve waited, uncertain of where Bucky was going.

Bucky picked up his coffee cup and stared into it for a long moment. “I’m supposed to be ‘the world’s deadliest assassin.’ The newspapers said so.” Something like a smirk skittered across his face before he looked up at Steve. “I don’t know if you can keep me safe.”

“I can at least try.” Steve looked up. “I can damn sure try, and I hit back pretty hard against the people who were calling you all those vile things in the papers and on the air.”

Another frown. “The papers weren’t very vile. They were saying true things.” 

“It’s not true that you were a traitor, or a terrorist, or some kind of war criminal.” Steve’s eyes hardened as he remembered some of the slanderous garbage that had been hurled at Bucky by the muckraking punditry. “And even the things you did do, you didn’t do them because you wanted to. You didn’t have a choice.”

A strange expression flitted across Bucky’s face. Confusion, maybe. Or anger. Or fear. Possibly all three. Slowly he said, “I know I did those things. That’s why I was in prison. That’s why I had a lawyer.” He swirled the coffee around in its cup. “That’s why it was in newspapers.”

“I know you did things, Buck.” Steve picked up his glass of orange juice, then set it down again as he realized he’d only picked it up to give his hands something to do other than clench into fists at the injustice of it all. “But I know that those things weren’t your fault. You didn’t plan them. You didn’t give the orders, you didn’t want to follow the orders, and you couldn’t choose not to.”

Bucky continued to stare into his coffee cup.

“Bucky, listen to me.” Steve reached a hand across the table. “I know you didn’t have a choice. That was the whole point of those hearings. The files we downloaded from the chair said as much. Even Dr. Rodchenko said as much.” He clenched his jaw. “Every time you tried to resist, they’d just stick you back in that damned thing and rewire your brain. They took away your ability to refuse. They didn’t want you to fight back, because they knew they’d all be dead if you did.”

Bucky said nothing, and Steve reached out his hand for Bucky’s. How could it be possible for Bucky to have so much trouble grasping this concept? What was so unbelievable about those atrocities not having been his fault?

Steve’s hand came to rest on Bucky’s. “Come on, Buck. Talk-”

“There were photographs,” Bucky said suddenly. He looked up. “The guards showed me. There were photographs from the war.” Quietly he added, “There were photographs of us.”

“I know.” Steve nodded, keeping his eyes on Bucky’s. Trying to gauge how much of this was really sinking in. “Bernie - Ms. Rosenthal - wanted to remind everyone that you weren’t always the Winter Soldier. That you were a war hero first. That you had a life that’d been stolen from you.” The lump had returned to his throat. “That you were my friend.”

“They were good photographs.” Bucky set the empty coffee cup down and surveyed the table. “We’re out of toast. We’re out of everything.”

Steve looked across the table at his broken friend for a long moment. Yes, the photographs had been good ones. They’d been specifically chosen for that reason. Every single one of them showcased Bucky as Steve had remembered him during those couple of years when they’d fought together. But they’d only shown Bucky as a soldier. They hadn’t shown Bucky the way he’d been before he’d been drafted.

Those were the ones Bucky needed to see. The ones he needed to remember. Trouble was, except for the track team photos already in his own apartment, Steve didn’t know where to even start looking for any.

“Yeah, I know.” Steve looked around the kitchen. “We don’t have much, do we?”

Whatever else Bucky might have needed, he needed to get back to normality even more. He’d made breakfast - well, he’d given it his best shot, anyway - because Steve hadn’t been awake to do it for him. And now he’d be expecting a jog. The routine was important, after all, and Steve had already promised to do whatever it took to help Bucky recover.

The jog ended up taking them to another pancake house - this one a larger place called ‘Batter Up!’ - where they made up for having had a breakfast of nothing but toast. And afterwards, the food sitting very heavily in their stomachs, they headed at a leisurely pace over to Prospect Park to walk it off.

\---

They jogged the path around the lake twice, then slowed to an amble. A lot of people were in the park that day; the weather was warm and breezy, and people were barbequing and boating and tossing footballs back and forth, and laying on the grass with their headphones on.

Normal things.

Bucky wondered if he had ever done any of those normal things. Supposedly he had been born and raised in Brooklyn (even if he couldn’t remember any of it and even if it didn’t seem to make any kind of sense), and so…

He didn’t know where to go with that thought.

A vendor was selling fish food out of a cart. Steve bought two bags and then they stood at the shore of the lake, watching as enormous, brightly colored fish scrabbled for dried breadcrumbs. 

“They eat a lot.” Bucky tossed another handful of crumbs. “They’ll probably go through both bags.” A moment, then, “We eat a lot. All we do is eat.”

Steve laughed at that. “Ma would’ve said we were growing boys.”

They continued to feed the fish in silence. They had eaten, they had jogged, and Steve didn’t seem like he was angry. He was smiling and he had laughed, and that was good. 

That meant they needed to finish the conversation from earlier. Bucky had argued with him and told him to shut up and told him he quit the team, and even though Steve hadn’t mentioned any of those things, they needed to finish the conversation.

He bit his lip. Tossed another handful of crumbs to the fish.

“I didn’t…” he started to say, but couldn’t figure out how to finish. “I didn’t mean…”

No.

He snorted in frustration. Tried again. “Staying together. On a mission. That’s not going to work.”

“It’s got to work, Bucky.” Steve flicked a large crumb farther out into the lake and watched a couple of the fish chase after it. “I can’t go letting you put yourself in danger like that. You’re part of a team for a damn good reason.”

“That’s…” Bucky almost said ‘stupid,’ but caught himself in time. “That’s never the way it worked before. I had a support team sometimes, but…”

But it never really mattered if they lived or died, so Bucky had never put any thought into them. He realized that Steve wouldn’t like that answer very much though. He didn’t like to hear anything about Bucky being the Winter Soldier.

Even if that’s who he was. Even if he called himself Bucky. Even if his name was Bucky, that didn’t suddenly mean he wasn’t the Winter Soldier anymore.

But Steve wouldn’t like that.

“It’s not just a support team anymore.” Steve turned to Bucky, his hand full of unthrown breadcrumbs. “Not just a few expendables for backup with you as the only asset. This is a team where everybody counts. Everybody matters, and everybody’s got something worthwhile to contribute. Which means that nobody goes it alone.”

“Lots of people go it alone.” He didn’t want to yell at Steve again, so he concentrated on flinging another handful of crumbs at the fish. “Natasha was alone. That’s how she found me at the elevator. And we finished the mission together and we acquired the target.”

“Natasha doesn’t have a megalomaniac from HYDRA gunning for her specifically.” Steve looked at Bucky, his eyes uncompromising. “I think it’s a little bit different. And besides, once she caught up to you, she stayed with you till the end of the mission. She was looking out for you.”

Bucky snorted in frustration and looked away. “You can’t…” He poked around in the crumb bag. “You can’t run a mission that way. It won’t work. We can’t stay together at all times.”

For a super soldier, Steve was really dense.

He flung the last handful of breadcrumbs, and the fish went wild. “Nothing would get done.”

Steve sighed and scattered his handful of breadcrumbs. “A lot more would get done if you were partnered with me, or with Natasha. Working alone is dangerous, for one thing, and besides, it’s a terrible idea to go off hunting HYDRA alone.” He shook his head. “You can’t fight them all by yourself. Even as badly broken up as they are, there are just too many of them.” 

Another snort of frustration, louder this time.

Bucky really didn’t want to argue with Steve, but Steve made it so easy. He was stubborn and stupid that way. But Bucky still didn’t want to argue with him. He didn’t want to yell at him or tell him to shut up, and he didn’t want to run off either.

He wanted to stay with Steve for as long as he could.

“You don’t stay side-by-side with someone on every mission,” Bucky said slowly and carefully. “You just don’t. Missions don’t work that way, Steve.”

“They do when the person in danger is my best friend.” Steve’s hand clenched on the last few breadcrumbs in the bag. “When not staying side-by-side can mean I lose you when I’ve only just gotten you back, then missions have to work that way. Because the alternative can’t happen. Do you understand me, Bucky?” Steve looked him square in the eyes. “I’m not losing you to Lukin all over again. Not now. Not ever.”

Bucky broke his gaze and stared out at the fish. “I’m the world’s deadliest assassin. I can handle myself on missions. That’s…” He shook his head. “That’s all I’ve ever done.”

“It’s not all you’ve ever done.” Steve stuffed his crumpled breadcrumb bag into his pocket and faced Bucky squarely. “It’s not all you ever were. Those pictures in the papers were of you from a different time. A better time, before they tore you apart and made you into the Winter Soldier.” He shook his head. “And for what it’s worth, I don’t want you to be the world’s deadliest assassin anymore. You never wanted that for yourself. It was something that was done to you, and you don’t have to let it be all you can ever amount to.”

Bucky sighed.

Why was Steve so fucking stubborn? 

Steve was looking at him with an expression that clearly meant he wanted Bucky to say something. Probably he wanted Bucky to agree with him.

Instead Bucky muttered, “Stop looking at me like that.”

Steve’s only response was a laugh. 

\----

As he laughed, Steve reached into his pocket for the breadcrumbs bag. There was a last half-handful in it, after all, and there was no sense wasting it, so he uncrumpled it and shook it out over the water. The fish churned the water in their greedy haste, and Steve tossed the empty bag into a nearby trash can.

Bucky looked at him. “Want to get more?”

“Yeah.” Steve nodded and looked over at the fish food vendor. He could head over by himself without having to worry; he’d be in sight of Bucky and within easy reach as well. “You can wait here if you like. I’ll just be a second.”

Enough of a second, as it turned out, to think about the parts of the conversation that they hadn’t had yet. Particularly the part about the Russian Kronas man Bucky had killed. Hearing it had unnerved and frightened Steve, and the thought of it still disturbed him. Killing a man in the heat of combat was one thing; sometimes it simply couldn’t be avoided no matter how hard they tried. They’d all done it at one point or another. But killing a man who was helpless - that was murder, and that could not be allowed to happen. Especially not when Bucky was involved.

He paid for the breadcrumbs and looked back at Bucky, who was still standing near the edge of the lake with his hands in his pockets. He belonged in a place like this, Steve thought; in a public park on a spring day, helping the carp and the ducks get fat and soaking up the tranquility of his surroundings. He needed something to give him balance, to dull the edge of his conditioned killer instinct. Maybe after enough peace, Bucky wouldn’t find it quite so easy to kill.

“Here you go.” Steve handed Bucky one of the new bags of crumbs and watched him toss out the first handful. Then he took a deep breath and said what had been on his mind.

“Listen, Bucky, we still need to talk about the man you killed last night. The Russian.”

Bucky watched the fish with interest. “Which one?”

Steve winced at that, but did his best to keep going. “The one I heard you questioning over the earpiece.”

Bucky’s expression darkened. “Bezborodov.” He didn’t look at Steve.

“Was that his name?” Steve’s brows knit. “How did you know him?”

Bucky was silent for a long moment, his brow furrowing in what looked like intense concentration. Finally, slowly, he said, “He knew me.”

“How?” Steve saw horrible images in his mind’s eye. HYDRA’s reach was long, and so was that of the Russians. Bezborodov had been both. Had Lukin sent him along with the rest of his men specifically to track Bucky down?

“What were you saying to him?”

Bucky’s fist clenched over the breadcrumb bag. “It wasn’t…” He swallowed. “It wasn’t a very… productive… conversation.”

“Yeah.” Steve heard the horrible sounds in his head. The damp snap of bone breaking under pressure. Choked, gurgling screams. The dull thudding of flesh and bone meeting stone and metal. Panicked, incomprehensible jabbering in Russian that was cut off by the sickening crunch of a neck breaking. “Yeah, I put that together myself.”

Bucky exhaled slowly. “He was there for the target. Which means… it means…” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. “He was there for the target.”

Steve looked hard at Bucky, trying to understand. “What does that mean, Buck? What were you trying to get out of him?”

The bag exploded in Bucky’s hand suddenly, a spray of crumbs flying into the air before scattering on the ground and into the lake. 

“I couldn’t get anything out of him!” He tossed the bag aside and walked a few steps away from Steve. “I couldn’t… I asked…” His breath hitched. “I couldn’t get anything! I asked and I asked and…” He shook his head wildly. “I couldn’t get anything.”

“Lukin.” Steve finally realized what Bucky had been trying to do. “You wanted him to lead you to Lukin.”

Bucky said nothing, but his shoulders were shaking with frustration and rage. “I couldn’t…” His breath caught in his throat. “I tried… I tried, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t even ask.”

“I know, Buck.” Steve came up behind Bucky and put his hands on both his shoulders. 

His heart ached for Bucky; they’d taken his mind to pieces in their insane efforts to turn him into ‘the perfect killing machine’, and they’d broken him so badly in the process that he’d bear the mental and emotional scars for the rest of his life.

“We’ll help you beat it.” Steve came around Bucky’s side to face him, his hands still on Bucky’s shoulders, and looked him in the eye. “I promise, we’re going to help you get past everything they conditioned into you. And Lukin’s going to pay for what he did.”

“I owe them,” Bucky said quietly.

“We both do,” Steve replied, his eyes fixed on Bucky’s. “And I promise you, you’ll get what you’re owed.” He took a deep breath. “But I need you to understand something, Bucky. There’s a big difference between killing in combat and killing in cold blood. We’re soldiers, you and me, and every soldier has blood on his hands, but…” 

“It wasn’t cold blood,” Bucky whispered. The anger seemed to drain out of him then and he leaned forward suddenly, his forehead coming up against Steve’s. “He would have tried to kill you. He would have tried to kill Natasha, or anyone else on your team. He’s a killer. That’s what he does.” A beat, then, “Just like me.”

“You stop that right now.” Steve glared at Bucky and moved a hand up to the back of his neck, pressing Bucky’s forehead against his own. “You didn’t choose to become the Winter Soldier. You had no say in what was done to you then, but you do have a say in where you go from here. You don’t have to be what they wanted you to be. You can make the choice yourself. Do you understand what I mean?”

Bucky looked at him with eyes that seemed both tired and lost. “I don’t know.” He sighed. “I don’t know anything anymore. This isn’t…” He shook his head, but didn’t pull away. “This isn’t easier than prison.”

“Maybe not.” Steve put both arms around Bucky’s shoulders. “But prison wouldn’t have helped you. What we’re doing now is, and you’re going to get better.” He smiled as he remembered the one type of therapy they hadn’t begun yet, and the one that he personally believed would help Bucky the most. 

“Especially once you start seeing Jean Grey next week.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today is a cold, rainy, windy day. Hopefully your day is less cold, windy, and rainy (unless you like that sort of thing, in which case, enjoy). 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who takes the time to leave comments and kudos. Those are like tips jars for fanfic writers, and it's what makes posting worth it. Thank you, thank you. *blows kisses*
> 
> As always, comments, questions, feedback, and suggestions for other meals for our super soldiers to eat are welcomed, encouraged, hoped for, and adored.


	8. Memory Walk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Bucky?” Steve stepped forward, a high note of unease in his voice._
> 
> _Ms. Grey held out a hand. “He can’t see or hear you at all. You can’t interact with a memory.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If they're ["speaking like this,"] then they're speaking in Russian. Except when all the characters in the scene are Russian. Just assume Russian is being spoken then.

**Brooklyn**  
**May 2015**

Bucky had followed through on his promise to talk to Darien Nash (a bit), and the last meeting had been (reasonably) productive. 

“Sometimes our routines get disrupted,” Nash had agreed. “And it can be disturbing when you’re first trying to settle back into civilian life.”

Bucky had wanted to argue back at him, but then Nash suggested they explore strategies for coping with a disruption in routine. Healthy strategies, ones that didn’t include sitting on the floor of the kitchen and panicking.

When Bucky asked how Nash knew that, Nash laughed and said, “We’ve all been there, man. All of us.”

So maybe Darien Nash wasn’t so bad.

His session with Dr. Levitt had been (somewhat) productive as well. They both ate peppermints, and for some reason, Bucky decided to tell him about his mission with SHIELD and the argument between him and Steve that had happened afterward. 

“You feel that Steve really can’t protect you,” Dr. Levitt had said. “Not after seventy years. And yet, he feels the need to try anyway. And that’s part of the source of this clash between the two of you.”

Maybe Dr. Levitt wasn’t completely stupid.

Maybe.

However, when Bucky tried to point out to Steve that he had talked in both his therapy session _and_ his social work session, and so he didn’t also need psychic therapy with Jean Grey, Steve remained stupidly unconvinced.

“We’ve talked about this, Bucky.” Of course Steve was going to be stupidly stubborn about it. “You need this therapy as much as you need all the rest.”

There was no time to argue after that, because Natasha landed a white Porsche Boxster Mark V flying car on the street. The top was rolled down, and Natasha looked very comfortable behind the wheel.

And yeah, the neighbors noticed. Two seconds after landing, the car was surrounded by kids. And some adults, too. Because who wouldn’t want to look at a goddamn flying luxury car?

“Are you coming, boys?” The corners of Natasha’s mouth twitched upwards in that small smile of hers. “Because it looks like everyone’s going to want a ride if you don’t.”

Bucky climbed into the passenger seat before Steve could claim it. [“I didn’t think you were coming,”] he said to Natasha, as Steve clambered into the backseat. 

[“Of course I came.”] Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. [“It’s your first session, I thought you’d want the company. Besides, I want to be there.”]

“Guys?” Steve spoke up, folded uncomfortably into the back seat as he was. “Can we please keep it in English?” He shifted, jostling the front seats. “Also, wasn’t there a car with more than two and a half seats?”

“Not one as fun to drive as this.” Natasha smiled at Steve in the rearview mirror before shifting her seat forward. “And not one that flies.”

The neighbors watched as the car took off into the sky. And even though Bucky didn’t particularly want to go to more goddamn therapy, he allowed himself a moment to feel kind of smug about being in the car. 

“This also cuts a ninety minute journey down to about twenty, twenty-five,” Natasha continued, and the smugness abruptly vanished. Goddamn therapy was closer than he thought.

Before long, they were pulling up to the iron gates of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning in Salem Center, New York. 

“Trying to fly directly into the school would be a bad mistake,” Natasha explained. “They’ve dealt with too much to let anyone over their direct airspace without warning.”

“Good morning, all,” a cheerful voice said over the gate’s intercom. Bucky immediately recognized the voice as belonging to Dr. Henry McCoy. “Classes are in session today, so do try not to let the hellions steal your sweet car.”

“I’m not going to steal their car,” muttered the voice of a teenage boy.

“Dude, I might try to steal the car,” another boy said. “Look at that thing. It’s friggin’ sick, man.”

Dr. McCoy continued. “Julian promises not to try to steal the car. Santo can’t say the same.” The iron gates swung open. “Welcome to the Xavier School. I hope you survive the experience.”

Bucky looked at Natasha, who shrugged and directed the car through the gates and down the long, winding driveway. They pulled up to a massive, sprawling complex of brick and floor-to-ceiling windows and crawling vines. Dr. McCoy was waiting for them on the front steps, along with a black haired boy and a boy who appeared to be made of…

“Rocks,” Bucky murmured. “He’s made of rocks.”

Natasha shrugged. “It is a mutant school.”

Steve chuckled. “There’s a guy here who looks like a blue demon, too. It takes all kinds.”

Dr. McCoy bounded down the steps and leaped into the backseat of the car with surprising nimbleness. “And good morning again, Steven, Bucky, Natasha. Don’t mind Julian and Santo. They wanted to see, in Santo’s words, the ‘sick car in all its boss ass glory.’”

He directed them to the garage, and then they were walking through the halls and up the stairs of a very busy school, until they came to the office of Jean Grey. 

“Have a good time, all,” Dr. McCoy said with a smile and a wink, before shutting the door on his way out.

Jean Grey came out from behind a massive oak desk to greet them. The first thing Bucky noticed about her was the long, red hair. The second thing was her face, which seemed both soft and kind, and her eyes, which were a startling green.

It put him at ease a little. 

“Please have a seat,” Ms. Grey said, gesturing to several plush chairs around a small, round coffee table. A tea service sat atop the table, and Ms. Grey began pouring the tea as everyone seated themselves.

“My name is Jean Grey,” she continued. “And I’m the headmistress of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning.” She took a cup of tea for herself and settled back in one of the plush chairs.

“I had the privilege of speaking with Professor Xavier once,” Steve offered. “The first year I was back. He was a good man.”

“He still is.” Ms. Grey smiled and stirred her tea. “He’s enjoying his retirement. Seeing as much of the universe as he can. And we’re doing our best to carry on his vision.” 

Bucky frowned. “He’s… in space?”

“Oh yes.” She sipped her tea. “So before we begin, I’d like to give you the opportunity to ask me whatever questions you might have. I know how intrusive something like this might feel, especially after what you’ve been through, and it’s important that you feel comfortable before we actually do anything.”

Bucky stared into his teacup for a long moment, then looked at Ms. Grey. “Will it hurt?” 

Next to him, Steve winced, but Ms. Grey simply shook her head. “No. Of course not. I’ve actually done something similar to this before. It might feel a bit weird at first, but there won’t be any physical pain. I can promise you that.”

“Okay.” Bucky sipped at his tea, which was a bit too hot, but tasted like lavender. He didn’t know what else he was supposed to say.

“But there are some precautions we do need to take,” Ms. Grey continued. “The very first being to create what I call an ‘anchor memory’.” She stirred her tea. “I know the memories themselves, at least the more recent ones, won’t be pleasant to relive, and if we encounter anything traumatic, it’s helpful to have an easy escape route. So what we can do is designate a happy memory as a fallback point. Something that gives you nothing but happiness and peace. That way, if things become overwhelming and you need to get out, all you’ll have to do is reach for that memory and you’ll find yourself there.”

“A happy memory…” Bucky repeated, and once again his gaze strayed into the cup.

He liked sitting on the couch and watching Netflix. He liked jogging in the mornings and eating at pancake houses with Steve. He liked talking to Natasha. But did any of those count as happy memories? Happy enough to serve as an escape route from anything traumatic?

Probably not.

“I…” He didn’t want to look at anyone. “I don’t know.”

“Can we use one of mine instead?” Steve asked, reaching out a hand and laying it on Bucky’s arm. “I’ve got one.”

“Sure,” Ms. Grey said instantly, and Bucky wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or just stupid. “Of course.” She looked at him. “Bucky?”

Bucky nodded. 

“Well then.” Ms. Grey set down her teacup. “Let’s begin. This might feel a little odd at first…”

\---

They were standing on the beach. On the beach at Coney Island, to be exact, on a late afternoon in autumn before the air had gotten too chilly. The waves crashed onto the sand rhythmically, the cries of the gulls and the light background noises of the boardwalk drifted through the air, the scents of Nathan’s hot dogs, funnel cakes, and boardwalk fries mingled deliciously in his nostrils, and the setting sun cast a pinkish-orange glow over the dunes. 

Steve stood there on the sand of his favorite place in the world, flanked by Natasha, Bucky, and Ms. Grey, looking out at the beach.

“So…” He turned to Ms. Grey. “We’re inside my memory now?”

“Yes and no," Ms. Grey explained. “This is a construct. A representation I brought from your memory into a shared headspace. You can think of it as a bridge connecting all three of your minds.”

“And he can choose to come here at any point?” Natasha looked around, her eyes catching Steve’s and showing that the significance of the place hadn’t escaped her. 

“Yes. You all can.” Ms. Grey nodded, then turned to Bucky. “All you need to do is concentrate on this place and you’ll find yourself here.”

“Is this…?” Bucky frowned and turned around, studying the small Nathan’s Famous restaurant on the boardwalk. “Is this Coney Island? But older? Old Coney Island?” He glanced at Steve. “Your Coney Island?”

“Our Coney Island, Buck.” He put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder and gripped it tightly. “From when we were kids. I figured…”

It had always been the place the two of them had gone to have fun. To pass a day or an evening, to get into trouble, to eat hot dogs and look at girls and drink beer on the beach after sunset. Steve had nothing but good memories of Coney Island, and every single one of them had Bucky in it.

“I figured it would help.”

“All right,” Ms. Grey said, and the beach wavered before their eyes. “Let’s do this.”

They were standing in a long, dark corridor, lit only by the occasional, flickering overhead light. A seemingly endless row of closed doors lined either side of the corridor, and each door had a nameplate on it. Only the nameplates were unreadable; they had been painted over or crossed out with black marker or simply broken into pieces.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “And whose happy memory is this?”

Ms. Grey shook her head. “No one’s.” She looked at Bucky. “I needed a visual metaphor for the inside of your mind, and this is what came up first.”

“They’re all locked.” Steve tried one doorknob, rattled another, yanked savagely at another, but none of them would budge. 

“Metaphor, Rogers.” Natasha laid a gentle hand on his shoulder just as he was about to throw his shoulder into another one of the doors. “It’s not going to be that simple.”

Ms. Grey reached for the doorknob closest to their end of the hallway. “This is the only one that’s unlocked.” She gestured to Bucky. “Shall we?” 

She pushed the door open, and they all walked into a very tidy, windowless room lined with file cabinets. Ms. Grey surveyed the room, hands on hips, before saying:

“These are newer memories. There would be memories here that you still have access to.”

“Like my time in prison?” Bucky asked. 

“Like your time in prison.” Ms. Grey opened one of the nearby cabinets, pulled out a file, and flipped through it. “Like your time in Avengers Tower right before prison, and parts of your month with HYDRA before that. But…” She stopped on one particular page. “Let’s go back a little further. A few months further.” She looked at all of them. “Are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” Steve replied instantly, and then…

……………

The soldier lay in bed in a windowless room of whitewashed walls. An IV line ran from his organic hand to several bags mounted on a pole. He was wearing a white t-shirt and probably white cotton pants, but the lower half of him was covered by a blanket.

So he had probably come out of cryosleep a day or so ago. Mission soon then.

_“Bucky?” Steve stepped forward, a high note of unease in his voice._

_Ms. Grey held out a hand. “He can’t see or hear you at all. You can’t interact with a memory.”_

_Next to her, Bucky’s mouth thinned into an unhappy line. Natasha put a hand on his arm._

The soldier scrabbled for the IV in his hand, but the door opened suddenly and a hard-faced, middle aged man in a charcoal gray suit walked into the room and came to stand by the bed.

“Good.” The man’s voice was sharp. “You’re awake. Now give me your full attention, Soldier. You have a mission.” A note of annoyance came into his voice. “A very important one, clearly.”

_“Lukin.” Steve’s voice was murderous. “That’s him, isn’t it? I’ll tear him apart…”_

_“You can’t, Rogers.” Natasha put her other hand on his arm. “This is a memory. You can’t change what’s already happened. All you can do is watch.”_

The soldier slowly pushed himself into a sitting position and looked at the man - the General - through a curtain of stringy hair. 

“Tomorrow, Soldier, you will be going to the United States.” The General gave him a sour look. “You will be reporting directly to Alexander Pierce, the Secretary of Defense. You are to obey his orders as you would obey mine, is that clear, Soldier?”

Confusion skittered across the soldier’s face and stayed in his eyes. “Sir?” 

“Was I unclear?” The General’s eyes narrowed. “You have been given an assignment by HYDRA Command. A very important project is underway, and they have requisitioned you for it. You will be under Pierce’s command for a number of weeks, most likely, and I expect nothing less than perfection on the reports I receive during that time. Is that clear, Soldier?”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier murmured. He chewed on his lip and looked at the General in tense silence.

“Well?” the General snapped. “Out with it already.”

Another moment passed before the soldier murmured, “The doctor will come, too?”

“Of course not,” the General spat. “I barely consented to allow them to commandeer you. I’m not letting them have Rodchenko as well. I will send a technician along, and that will have to suffice.”

The confusion was replaced by a look of utter misery. 

“It’s not your job to like it, Soldier.” The General folded his arms and glared at him stormily. “It’s your job to follow orders. And right now, your orders are to go to the United States and do whatever it is that Pierce wants you to do until he decides he has no further use for you. Is that understood?”

The soldier’s eyes dropped to his lap. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” The General turned on his heel and walked out of the room. A short while later - or maybe a long while; he didn’t know - the door opened again and the doctor walked in.

“The General isn’t permitting me to come along with you,” he said by way of greeting. He sighed and sat down in a chair next to the bed. “No matter how I’ve phrased it.”

“Why?” The soldier didn’t look up. 

The doctor sounded tired. “I don’t know. I’ve given Marko Danilovich all the information he needs and instructions to check in with me regularly, but I don’t know this man Pierce.” He sighed. “Just treat him as you would treat the General. Give him nothing to be angry about and obey his orders.”

Silence.

“Listen to me, Soldier.” The doctor leaned forward, a note of urgency creeping into his voice. “This is important. I won’t be there with you. You’ll be on your own.” Something bitter coated the doctor’s words. “You must follow this American’s orders to the letter, do you understand? Whatever it is that he requires you to do, do it quickly and well and without hesitation.”

The soldier chewed on his lip and remained silent.

“Finish your mission quickly.” The doctor looked over his shoulder, then back at the soldier. “Finish it as soon as you can, so that you can return here. Do you understand me, Soldier? You must come back here as quickly as possible.” The doctor paused. “Isn’t that what you want?”

After a moment, the soldier nodded.

The memories continued: transportation to Washington, D.C; the assassination of Director Fury; landing on top of the target’s car and ripping the steering wheel off; a single shot fired, and the Black Widow staggered and fell to the ground.

_Bucky looked at Natasha with wide eyes, but said nothing. She looked back at him, her own eyes tinged with - was it pity? Regret? Her hand tightened on his arm._

The bank vault. Thick walls and barred doors and a dozen weapons trained on him. Marko Danilovich and the American technician in the bow tie. Secretary Pierce. 

“The man on the bridge,” the soldier whispered, child-like and terrified and surrounded by strangers. “Who was he?”

The thick rubber bit between his teeth. The chair’s restraints clamping onto him, locking him in place as the electrodes snapped into position against his head. The fear, crippling and paralyzing, the indescribable terror that always heralded the pain, and it was too much.

_Steve looked around, but Bucky was gone._

_“Coney Island,” Ms. Grey said. “Your happy memory. He went there.”_

\---

Steve hadn’t seen Bucky leave. He’d been too captivated by the horrifying scene in the bank vault. After everything they’d done to Bucky, all the memory wipes and conditioning and cryosleep and assassination missions - after all that, he’d still remembered Steve. Somewhere deep inside his mind, he’d remembered. And they’d tortured him for it.

_But I knew him…_

There was another name to add to the list of people who’d escaped their just punishment by dying, Steve thought bitterly. Pierce had treated Bucky every bit as callously as Lukin had. He’d spoken to him as though he weren’t even human, slapped him across the face to get his attention, lied to him outright about Steve, and casually ordered his mind wiped. He deserved worse than the quick death he’d gotten.

But Pierce wasn’t the issue now. Bucky was.

“Buck?”

Steve found himself on the beach, the cool autumn breeze ruffling his hair and the smell of the salt air in his nose. Bucky sat by himself in the middle of the beach, head in his hands, staring down at the sand.

“Bucky?” Steve came up behind him and laid a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Bucky startled at the touch, and while he didn’t pull away, he didn’t respond either. He just shook his head and continued to look at the sand.

Steve sat down next to him, drew his knees up, and rested his arms over the top of them. “Pierce is dead, Buck. We destroyed the chair. We’re in the middle of ripping HYDRA apart. I swear to God, no one’s ever going to do that to you again.”

It didn’t really matter, though, did it? It had already been done, and nothing could change that. They couldn’t go back in time and stop any of it from happening. And all Steve had to offer Bucky was a way to try and repair the damage that had been done.

“Talk to me, Bucky.”

Again Bucky shook his head, but finally he said, “It’s only going to get worse.” Steve had to strain to hear him. “I know it.”

\---

Natasha looked around at the frozen panorama around her. James sat in the chair, paralyzed in mid-scream, as Pierce remained posed in mid-stride, his back turned to the horror he was leaving in his wake. Brock Rumlow stood just to her left, his face a sneering mask that she suddenly longed to drive the point of her elbow into. He’d been watching James in agony, she realized, and enjoying it.

“They’ll probably need a few minutes,” Ms. Grey said calmly, as if she normally stood in the middle of a memory freeze-frame. Which, Natasha decided, she probably did.

She nodded. Let them have their few minutes. She could do with a break herself. Looking at the expression on James’ face was something she couldn’t bring herself to do for more than a second or so, and looking at Pierce and Rumlow and the rest of them was just making her feel violent.

He’d looked at her in aghast horror when he’d watched himself shoot her. What was it going to be like when they found the memory of what had happened in Odessa? How deeply would it hurt him to watch himself do that to her? And how much worse would it be when he learned about what they’d meant to one another before Odessa?

“Is he going to be able to handle the rest of this?”

Ms. Grey blew out a sigh, and around them the scene faded until they were standing once again in the tidy file room. “I don’t know. What do you think? You obviously care about him very much.” There was no slyness in her tone. 

Natasha froze for a moment, then regained control of herself and shifted into a casual smirk. “Right. You read minds.” She held the smirk for a moment, then felt herself crumple. There was no need for that with someone who had offered to help James. And Ms. Grey hadn’t been responsible for what had happened to either of them.

“Sorry.” She shook her head. “The last time someone learned that I cared about him at all, he wound up being sent to kill me.”

“Well.” A small, sad smile drifted across Ms. Grey’s lips. “I didn’t need to read your mind to see that you care about him.” 

That was the problem, Natasha thought. They hadn’t been able to hide their love for one another, and it had been used against them. And as long as HYDRA and the Red Room still existed, that awful possibility would still be there.

“I do care,” she said hollowly. Then her eyes snapped back into focus and her voice returned to its usual composed tone. “Enough to want to make sure he can recover. Rogers thinks it’s just a matter of time, but he’s an idealist. I want to hear it from you.”

Ms. Grey seemed to turn the question over in her mind a few times before replying. “I’ve helped others with memory recovery before. One person’s mind had been damaged quite extensively, and for quite a long time, but this person did recover.” She took a breath. “It’s possible, and I think it’s possible for Bucky, but it’s going to take time, support, and more than just psychic therapy.” 

She paused and looked at Natasha. “But I think you knew all of that.”

“Possible.” Natasha nodded, her eyes unfocusing for a moment as she thought about everything James had been subjected to. All the torture, all the mind-wiping, all the abuse in every possible form for seventy years. She’d been through it all too, of course, and she’d come out on the other side, but she also knew that she was the very rare exception.

She didn’t want _possibilities_ for James. He deserved more. He deserved the best that life had to offer from now on, because he’d certainly experienced the worst. He deserved to recover, and he deserved to spend the rest of his life surrounded by the people who loved him.

 _I love him._ She bit the inside of her mouth to keep her face from giving her away. _I don’t think I ever stopped._

\---

“We used to come here all the time,” Steve said softly. Not specifically to Bucky or to himself, but simply out into the cool evening air as they sat there side by side on the sand. “Every chance we got, when we were kids.” He smiled. “I remember one time - we must have been ten or so - we bought a cake and brought it out here. There was a guy who ran a stall on the boardwalk with a deep fryer, and he’d deep fry anything for a couple of cents. So we had him deep fry a birthday cake.”

He chuckled, shaking his head gently. “There are good things for you to remember too, Buck. Not everything’s going to be awful. I promise you, there are things you’re going to remember that are going to make you smile.”

“But it’s a long way away,” Bucky said quietly. “There’s nothing good before then.”

“There is,” Steve responded. “Not much, I’ll admit to that, but there are good things before then.”

Bucky exhaled slowly and closed his eyes, then leaned gently against Steve’s side. And Steve, just as gently, put his arm around Bucky’s shoulders and hugged him. He’d come such a long way from that first night, when he’d pulled a gun on Steve for even taking the first step towards him to give him a hug. And now there he was, making the first tentative moves himself.

“You’re going to get better, Buck.” Steve believed it with everything he had. “I’m going to make sure of it.”

Behind them, Ms. Grey quietly cleared her throat, and when Steve turned his head to look at her and Natasha, she said, “Would you like to continue, Bucky, or would you like to stop for now?”

Bucky hesitated a moment, but when he spoke, his voice was firm. “I want to continue. We’re already here. Let’s continue.”

…………………

The soldier tackled Captain America to the floor and brought his metal arm down in hammering, clubbing smashes again and again. Screaming “You’re my mission!” with each blow, his vision blurring and everything tearing loose in his head, and if he just finished the mission everything would stop and he could rest and -

“Then finish it,” Captain America managed through a mouthful of blood. “‘Cause I’m with you till the end of the line.”

Something broke inside the soldier’s mind then, something that whispered _But I knew him_ insistently and stopped him from bringing his arm down for the final blow, and at that moment, the helicarrier broke apart entirely.

The soldier instinctively grabbed a girder with his metal arm, his organic arm still dangling uselessly by his side, and Captain America fell away towards the river with the rest of the wreckage.

He is your mission.

_They could hear the soldier’s thoughts whispering in their heads._

He’s always been your mission.

You want to do something about that?

The soldier dropped into the water after Captain America.

_“I knew it was you, Bucky.” Steve’s voice sounded choked. “I knew you pulled me out.”_

The memories continued: the soldier’s trip to Wal-Mart and the Smithsonian; breaking into Captain America’s house; the three weeks spent with Steve and Natasha and Wanda and Sam in Brooklyn.

Bucky walked down the street, balancing a tray of Starbucks coffee and a bag of muffins. Bucky woke up in a warehouse, strapped down to the mental recalibration chair, and the General snarled his fingers in his hair and yanked his face up to meet his eyes. The soldier woke up in an empty room and told the General that he hated Captain America, that he would neutralize both Captain America and the Black Widow on sight.

_Bucky chewed on his lip. Stared at the floor._

_“Lukin’s insane,” Steve spat angrily. “Trying to turn Bucky against the both of us.”_

_“He knew we were a threat,” Natasha murmured. “He knew we’d have the best chance to break through James’ conditioning. So he needed us out of the way.”_

The soldier sat on the floor, wrists and ankles chained, shaking his head wildly. “No! Stop it!” But the General grabbed a handful of his hair and started yelling in his face and it didn’t matter because he was thinking of apple pie and it was only mind tricks and… 

The soldier hung limply in the chair, eyes burning and streaming hot down his face and all he kept asking was for it to stop, he just wanted to rest, but the General slapped him hard across the face - “You are mine, Soldier! You belong to me!” - and there was nothing he could do, nothing he would ever be able to do to stop it… 

The soldier stared down the barrel at Captain America, who was helpless and struggling, pinned under girders and rubble, and begging for ‘Bucky’ to just walk away, walk away, because he didn’t have to be the Winter Soldier anymore. The soldier hesitated a moment, then turned the pistol on himself, only for the Black Widow to kick it out of his hands before he could pull the trigger.

“This isn’t how it ends for you,” she said, and then the world went away. When he woke up, he was in Avengers Tower, and there was a doctor with blue fur and a terrible sense of humor.

He remembered everything that happened after that.

………………

“I think this is a good place to stop for today,” Ms. Grey said gently, and suddenly they were all sitting around the coffee table in her office. 

The tea had long since cooled, but Ms. Grey picked up Bucky’s cup and offered it to him, which he slammed down in one giant swallow. He was grateful for the cold lavender tea; it gave him an excuse not to speak right away, and maybe she understood that.

“Yeah.” Steve’s shoulders seemed to tremble as he spoke. “Yeah, I think that’s about all any of us can handle.” He looked over at Natasha, as if for confirmation, but Natasha neither spoke nor moved.

“It’s a lot to take in.” Ms. Grey held out Steve and Natasha’s teacups each, which they took and drank from in silence. “Which is why we only do this in stages. Take a moment. Relax. When you’re ready, I’ll walk you out.”

Ten minutes later, Ms. Grey walked everyone to the front door. “You don’t have the passcode to the garage. I’ll walk you.” She smiled at Bucky. “We’ll be right back.”

Bucky watched Steve and Natasha walk off with Ms. Grey before he sat down heavily on the front steps and let out breath that caused his shoulders to sag. 

Probably they were going to talk about him in the garage, but right at that moment, he didn’t care. 

“I’ve been through it myself, y’know.” A stocky man with spiky dark hair stood on the steps. Bucky had been too deep in his thoughts to notice his presence. “Wonderin’ if I’d made a mistake after the first memory walk.”

Bucky looked at him. “That right?” 

The man nodded. “Thinkin’ maybe it’d be better just to call the whole thing off and leave well enough alone.” He shook his head and jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “But you and I both know there ain’t nothin’ worse than not knowin’.”

“I don’t know.” Bucky was surprised to hear himself speak at all, but the words wanted to come out. “Lot of ugly stuff there, and we only covered a few months. Seventy years, and it’s all going to be shit.”

“I thought the same thing.” The man scowled, though not at Bucky. “And yeah, plenty of what Jeannie found in my head was shit. But there was enough in there that wasn’t shit to make sloggin’ through the rest of it worthwhile.” He nodded significantly at Bucky. “Believe you me, bub. Just knowin’ for sure after such a long time not knowin’, that’ll make it worthwhile all by itself.”

Bucky shrugged. Shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He pulled off his baseball cap and pushed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know.”

“I know,” the man said, and sat down on the steps beside Bucky, resting his elbows on his knees. “I went through it myself. Look, these things you’re gonna remember don’t define who you are. Nothin’ I remembered changed a damn thing about who I am.” 

He paused, shaking his head with a brief look of annoyance. “Includin’ my rudeness.” He reached over with an open hand. “Name’s Logan.”

“Bucky.” They shook hands, and before the conversation could continue, the car pulled up with Natasha at the wheel. Bucky stood. “That’s my ride.”

Logan grinned as Ms. Grey glided out of the car and landed on the steps, as if she did such things every day. Probably she did. “That’s my wife.” 

“Until next month, Bucky,” Ms. Grey said. “You take care.”

“For what it’s worth,” Logan offered as Bucky started towards the car, “who you were ain’t nearly as important as who you are.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. Sighed. “Maybe.”

And then he was off. Until next month anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is having a better day than Steve, Bucky, and Natasha.
> 
> As always, comments, kudos, and just saying hi are warmly welcomed, hoped for, and appreciated.


	9. Red Scare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The soldier dreamed in flashes of red._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If they're ["speaking like this,"], then they're speaking in Russian.

**somewhere**  
**May 2015**

The soldier had walked into the Black Widow’s trap. She was on his shoulders suddenly, and he grabbed a handful of her jacket and hurled her into an abandoned car with enough force to snap her neck.

She looked up at him, breathing shallowly, eyes clouded with shock and pain, and he raised the rifle and put a bullet through the center of her forehead.

But that wasn’t how it happened.

The Black Widow had gotten the better of him not once, but twice. First on the overpass: a perfect shot to his eye, and he would have been dead if it hadn’t been for the bulletproof goggles. Then on the street: a lure to an abandoned car, so that his back was turned when she attacked him.

He put a bullet through her shoulder as she ran, and this time, there was no Captain America to intervene. He fired his own perfect shot from the roof of a car, right through her eye, and he could see her other eye staring at him, glassy and hollow and dead.

“You’re my mission!” The soldier screamed and tackled Captain America to the floor and slammed his metal fist into the side of his face again and again and again.

Captain America told him to finish it, and the soldier obliged him, bringing his fist home again and again until the man’s face was a bloody mess of unrecognizable pulp. 

Or maybe the soldier hadn’t been able to finish it.

The bottom of the helicarrier dropped away and Captain America fell while the soldier held onto a dangling support beam. Captain America’s back hit the river with a bone-breaking crack; the soldier could hear it perfectly, despite the debris that rained around them. 

He watched Captain America sink into the water, down and down and down, until his body disappeared in the murk. And finally Captain America was dead. He was dead, and the soldier had finished his mission.

_Finally._

Bucky sat up in bed, sweaty and panting and eyes wide with terror, and he tried to will the sick away, tried to push it down and make it go away, but a second later he stumbled to the bathroom and fell onto his knees in front of the toilet and vomited up everything he had in him.

A nightmare.

Another nightmare.

Bucky knew it was another nightmare. He _knew_ it, but it didn’t feel unreal, didn’t feel like something that couldn’t have happened.

Or couldn’t still happen, if HYDRA - if the General - got their hands on him.

When there was nothing left, he vomited up stomach acid and then fell back against the wall, sick and miserable and panting shallow, bile-tinged breaths. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his palms against his eyes, and tried to calm himself. Eventually, hands trembling, he washed his mouth out with tap water, and then he shut the bathroom door behind him and stood panting in the dark hallway.

He ended up in Steve’s room - he couldn’t explain why - and after a moment of feeling weak and pathetic and stupid, he crawled into the bed. He hugged the edge of the mattress, careful not to disturb Steve, but it was enough.

Enough that Steve was there, warm and alive and sleeping.

\---

Years of soldier’s reflexes worked on their own, bringing Steve to semi-consciousness with the shifting of the mattress. He rolled over, bleary eyes open, to find Bucky curled up in a fetal ball on the other side of the bed. His arms were wrapped around himself, and he’d hunkered down as close as possible to the very edge of the mattress. And he seemed to be shivering.

A nightmare. 

Steve instantly thought back to what Jean Grey had said to him and Natasha on the walk back to the parking garage. That the recovery of Bucky’s memories would leave him raw and vulnerable, like a wound with its scab torn off. That he would need reassurance and compassion in the days following the psychic therapy. That he would need Steve most of all.

It wasn’t surprising that the memories Ms. Grey had recovered had given Bucky nightmares. Steve had been sickened to his core by what he’d witnessed, and he’d only been there as an observer. Bucky had lived through it.

“Bucky?” Steve struggled up onto his elbow and reached out a hand to lay on Bucky’s shoulder. “It’s all right. You can move over and make yourself comfortable.”

“I didn’t…” Bucky shook his head. “Didn’t… mean to…” He trailed off and shook his head again and didn’t move from the edge of the bed.

Steve hauled himself up into a sitting position and leaned over Bucky, his hand still on Bucky’s shoulder. “You had a nightmare, didn’t you.” He didn’t phrase it as a question, and he felt a great ache in his chest at Bucky’s lack of response. Bucky didn’t deserve this pain. He’d had so much pain in his life already, and it seemed unfair for it to be compounded in his recovery. “You want to talk about it?”

Another shake of the head, Bucky continuing to stare at him with wide, pitiful eyes. 

“All right.” Steve reached over with both hands and latched onto Bucky’s arm. “Come here.” He pulled Bucky towards him as best he could. Bucky pulled back for a second and then allowed himself to be dragged towards the middle of the bed and into a hug that Steve hoped would at least go a little ways towards banishing the nightmare.

“It’s all right, Buck. Whatever it was about, it was only a nightmare.”

Bucky gradually settled against Steve’s body and didn’t speak until his breathing had steadied into a gentle rhythm. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” he whispered, breath warm against Steve’s neck. “Either of you.”

“I know.” 

Steve had to squeeze his eyes shut against the sudden wrenching in his heart. Because that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? Bucky hadn’t wanted to do any of the things the Soviets or HYDRA had made him do, and it hadn’t mattered in the slightest. He’d tried to kill Natasha twice - once in Odessa and once in D.C. - even though there had been a time when they’d loved each other. He’d come close to killing Steve on a handful of occasions, even though the two of them had been closer than brothers. And the file (and Dr. Rodchenko) had detailed dozens of other examples of Bucky being made to do things he never would have imagined doing if he’d been in his right mind.

“I know you didn’t want to do any of it, Buck.” Steve hugged him tighter. “That was why you pulled me out of the river. That’s why you’re here right now.”

“It won’t get any better.” Bucky clung to him suddenly, fingers digging almost painfully into Steve’s side. “They can take me back. They can make me do whatever they want. They-” He choked suddenly, then gasped for air, his breathing ragged and awful.

“They aren’t going to get you back.” Steve shook him, gently but insistently. “Not as long as I’m here. Not as long as Natasha’s here. Not as long as you have people who give a damn about you to look after you.” He closed his eyes again, trying to block out the thought of Bucky being taken the way he’d been at the end of those three weeks in Brooklyn. Trying to will down the panic at the thought of Bucky disappearing into cryogenic hibernation again, after everything they’d done to help him. 

Not again. He’d die before he let them have Bucky again. 

“And it will get better.” Steve hugged him tightly. “It might not feel like it right now, but you’re already doing so much better than you were when you first showed up in my apartment. I promise you, Bucky, it’ll keep on getting better.”

“How?” Exhaustion had crept into Bucky’s tone. “How am I any better?”

“Well,” Steve gave a slight smile. “You pulled a gun on me the first time I tried to give you a hug, remember? And now look at you.”

Bucky snorted, but he didn’t pull away. “That’s a stupid example,” he murmured sleepily, and Steve was grateful that he at least seemed calmer. “You picked a stupid example.”

Steve chuckled. “All right, how about this? I don’t have to remind you to shave anymore.”

“Doesn’t count.” Bucky shifted slightly, his heading finding home on the perfect spot of Steve’s shoulder. “Did that myself.”

“After I had to remind you every day for I don’t know how many weeks.” Steve leaned his head against Bucky’s. “All by yourself, yeah.”

He could feel Bucky scowling against him. “You weren’t the one doing the actual shaving.”

“No.” Steve’s smile became a grin. “Just the actual reminding. Otherwise the actual shaving wouldn’t have actually happened.”

Bucky had nothing to say to that. He just lay there, his chest rising and falling gently against Steve’s side. “I can go,” he finally murmured, though he sounded seconds from sleep. “If you want the bed back.”

“No.” Steve shook his head, relief blossoming in his heart as Bucky began to drift off. “That’s okay. Good night, Buck.”

And as he felt himself beginning to follow Bucky into sleep, Steve thought of just how far Bucky had come since the beginning - how much calmer and more settled he’d become, how much he’d made himself at home there in Brooklyn with Steve, how horrified he was of ever being made to become the Winter Soldier again - and how much further he still had to go.

But he wouldn’t have to go it alone. And that was why he’d make it.

\---

The soldier dreamed in flashes of red.

A young woman with a serious expression on full lips faced off against him in a room full of other young women sent to survive or die.

The same young woman squared off with him once again, only the audience had become grim-faced members of the Politburo. They wanted to see their perfect weapons in action.

The soldier saw her again in widow’s black, a pistol in one hand and a grenade in the other. Her mouth quirked into a smile as she set the terms of the challenge.

She always had amazed him.

Bucky awoke sprawled atop Steve with visions of red in his mind and Natasha’s name on his lips.

On the bedside table, the numbers on the digital clock glowed an accusing red - five thirty in the morning. Not a good time to call anyone unless there was an emergency. Bucky tried to settle down and go back to sleep, but twenty minutes later - and with Steve still sound asleep - he carefully eased himself out of bed and then down the hall.

He made the call while standing at the window, watching the sun come up.

“James?” Despite the time, Natasha sounded awake and fully alert. [“Is everything all right?”]

Bucky hesitated a moment, then blurted the words out. [“Did we know each other? Before? We knew each other, didn’t we?”]

He had never been good at conversation, but this was important. 

There was a long pause before she replied. [“Yes.”] Another, even longer pause. [“What else did you remember?”]

[“I don’t know.”] His mouth thinned into a line and he stared up at the ceiling. [“I remember you stroked my hair and put me to bed after I fought with Steve and ruined his apartment.”]

He was starting to regret making the call, but hanging up abruptly would be stupider than the call itself.

Quietly he said, [“That wasn’t what I dreamed though.”]

[“You dreamed about me.”] There was a smile in her voice, but not a mocking one. [“What did you dream?”]

[“I…”] Something about her smile reeled him in, and he couldn’t have hung up if he tried. [“You were in black. With a veil. We were…”] He shut his eyes.

And then - the two of them faced each other on the field, the training simulation having come to a predictable end - the men were useless, they always were, but she was different, dressed in widow’s black with a smile quirking her perfect mouth, and he couldn’t help but smirk back at her and hitch his thumbs in his belt loops and close the gap between them, and someone - didn’t matter who - was yelling off to the side, and the soldier didn’t break eye contact with her - “Bring me better men,” he said. “Or more women like her.”

Bucky’s eyes snapped open. [“We…”] He gasped the words out. [“In the Red Room. We trained together. In the Red Room.”]

[“You trained me.”] There was no smile in her voice this time, just a sort of hollowness. [“You trained a lot of us, but I was the only one who stuck around for long.”]

There was a hesitation, an abrupt sort of emptiness that suggested she might have been about to say something else but stopped herself just before speaking.

[“I…”] He felt something in his stomach curdle, and without thinking, he leaned his head against the glass of the window. 

Why was he always so fucking stupid? 

He knew the answer, of course: thinking was for actual men, and he had never been anything more than a killer. But did that mean he had to ruin everything for her as well?

[“I shouldn’t have called,”] he said blankly. Stupidly. [“I’ll leave you alone.”]

[“You don’t have to-”] she started to say, but he disconnected the call.

Turned out he could hang up if he tried hard enough.

\---

It took Natasha five seconds to scrub the lock on Rogers’ front door. She could have used the key, of course - she’d made herself a copy of his key shortly after he’d moved in - but there were some skills worth practicing. She could pick nearly any tumbler lock in less than ten seconds, a feat that most professional safecrackers could not accomplish in double the time.

She had a reason for moving as quickly as she did. When James had hung up on her, she’d been seized by a deep and primal fear she hadn’t thought she was still capable of feeling. She’d made the drive over with reckless speed, cutting through parking lots and over pedestrian walks on her bike, trembling all the while.

Rogers, she’d thought irritably. Rogers had shaken her out of her customary cynicism. He’d ground down her resolve, made her dare to believe that James could recover. And in doing so, he’d given her so much to lose.

She stole through the apartment on cat’s feet, finding James waiting for her in the hallway, hands loose at his sides.

[“You didn’t need to come,”] he said quietly. 

[“You hung up on me.”] She arched an eyebrow. [“After calling me before sunrise to talk about things you’d remembered in a dream. I don’t think I needed much more of a reason to be worried about you.”]

She was a lot more than worried, of course, but she knew his memories hadn’t returned to that degree yet. He’d asked her if they’d known one another before; he certainly wouldn’t have remembered Odessa. Or how much they’d meant to each other beforehand, either. 

[“Why did you hang up?”] She leaned against the wall. [“Did something I said bother you?”]

[“I…”] He looked everywhere but at her. [“I don’t know.”] When he found her eyes, he added, [“Steve’s still asleep.”]

[“I know.”] She smiled wryly. Rogers never knew she was in his apartment until she wanted him to. [“Let’s sit down.”]

The light of the rising sun was just beginning to show over the harbor. She sat down on Rogers’ living room sofa and looked over at James. He looked uncertain, lost. Haunted by his dream of her and the still-undiscovered memories at which it had hinted.

[“There are things I don’t remember either, you know.”] She sighed. [“Things I didn’t even realize I didn’t remember until pretty recently. They did a number on us both.”]

James said nothing.

She felt helpless, and she hated that feeling with everything she had. There was so much that needed saying, so much that begged to be done, and she didn’t even know where to begin.

She was as damaged as he was. Just in more subtle ways.

[“Tell me about your dream.”]

He scrubbed his face with the palm of his organic hand. [“There’s nothing good to tell, is there? I know there’s nothing good to tell.”] He sighed, but after a moment, said, [“We were in the Red Room. There were other… other women there. And then we were in front of the Politburo. And then…”]

[“I remember sparring in front of the Politburo.”] She’d never forget it - one of the hardest things she’d ever done was to keep herself from letting the highly erotic undertones of their physical contest show through on the surface. When they’d practiced in private, things would turn sexual very quickly. But with top military and political brass watching every nuance of their every move…

[“I remember it.”] Her brow furrowed. [“Except I didn’t realize until just a few months ago that it was the Politburo watching us. They did something to my memory.”] She shook her head. [“So I wouldn’t remember how long I’ve been around.”] She frowned. [“The file said it was 1957 when-”]

She had to adjust herself mid-sentence to keep from stupidly blurting out what she’d been thinking. That they’d first been found out then. That their complicated relationship - their star-crossed romance - had gone back that far. That 1957 was the earliest instance in James’ file of their superiors attempting to prevent them from loving each other.

[“When you and I worked in the field together,”] she offered instead. [“I’d only been out of the Red Room for a couple of years. I didn’t know until a few months ago that I was as old as that.”]

James offered something resembling a hesitant half-smile. [“I didn’t know until a few months ago that I had a name.”] He shrugged. [“So… I guess we’ve both been fucked over.”]

[“I guess we have.”] The smile, even as tiny and hesitant as it was, warmed her heart.

She had to help him.

[“You told me back then that your name was James, you know.”] She bit her lip. [“I’m glad I knew that.”]

[“I don’t remember that.”] A shadow crossed his face, banishing even that small smile. [“I don’t remember ever having a name until recently. Except Soldier.”] He snorted. [“I don’t know if that counts.’]

[“No.”] She shook her head, the stony look on her face making her feelings absolutely plain. [“That doesn’t count.”]

How hard had they worked to grind away the man he’d been? A dark cloud gathered in her mind. Not just Lukin, but Karpov before him had picked through James’ mind to scour away any trace of Sergeant James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes. They’d even tried to take away the only part of his name he’d remembered. Not by deleting it from his memory - that was likely impossible - but by never referring to him as anything other than ‘Soldier’. By dehumanizing him, the way the Red Room trainers had reduced her and her classmates to ‘girl’ or ‘you’. Only in James’ case, it had worked on a far deeper level than it ever had with her.

[“I always remembered it.”] She wondered if she were giving too much away. This was a dangerous game she was playing, and she knew it. [“It seemed out-of-place back then. What Russian man calls himself ‘James’?”] She smiled slightly, her eyes distant, and shook her head. [“But it was your real name, and you told me.”]

He was watching her very carefully, and she wondered what he was looking for. After a moment, he said, [“When? When did I tell you?’] A frown settled onto his face. [“Why would I have told you?”]

_Stupid_ , she berated herself as she fought to keep control of her face.

[“I don’t remember what year it was.”] 

That, at least, was the truth. 

[“As for why…”] She sighed and clamped her face into a neutral mask to keep the pain she felt from making it to the surface. [“I hope you’ll tell me when you remember.”]

He couldn’t hide the disappointment on his face, but he murmured, [“Okay,”] and left it at that.

She wanted to tell him the truth. Fortunately, she was saved from making any more of a fool of herself by divine intervention.

“There you are, Bucky.” Rogers heaved a sigh of relief as he came into the room. “I woke up alone, no sign of you, and I thought -” 

So James had spent the night in Rogers’ bed? She raised an eyebrow at each of them in turn, thinking that if James had been in better condition, this would have made ideal fodder for ribbing. Taken more seriously, though, it actually sounded rather sweet.

Rogers stopped in mid-sentence, doing an almost comical double-take upon noticing her there as well. “Natasha? How long have you -” He sighed. “You know, I’d give you a key if you asked.”

“I know.” A smile came to her face easily. This, she could deal with. “But I have more fun surprising you.”

“I was awake for a while,” James said, “and you still hadn’t woken up. And then Natasha came over…” He trailed away and shrugged. Clearly he wasn’t going to mention that he had called her.

“So I see.” Rogers did his best to give her a sour glare, but she knew just as well as he did that his heart wasn’t in it. He really was a terrible liar. “Guess that’s one more for breakfast. How many waffles do you want, Nat?”

“Two.” She couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “One to eat and one for him to steal from me when he thinks I’m not looking.” She jerked her head at James, looking at him sidelong, and wished all over again that she could tell him.

And wondered what would happen when he finally did remember the whole truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, feedback, and what-have-you are warmly welcomed, encouraged, and hoped for.


	10. Brain Food

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky came back out into the living room in his pajamas, his hair still slightly damp._
> 
> _He stood in front of the couch for a long moment, as if he were uncertain about what he wanted to do next. And then without a word, he crawled onto the couch and over Steve, stretching out bodily on top of him, his head coming to rest on Steve’s chest._

**Brooklyn**  
**late May 2015**

Over the next several weeks, Steve continued to see steady improvement in Bucky.

Bucky had largely stopped resisting therapy, for one thing. He no longer sat there in stony silence as the minutes ticked off Dr. Levitt’s or Darien Nash’s clock and he seemed to have at least begun to accept that his therapists were trying to help him. He still wasn’t overly enthusiastic about going so often, but the sessions themselves were becoming much more productive.

For another thing, Bucky had begun to go out and explore the city again. Since recovering his memories from those three weeks in Brooklyn before being recaptured, he’d shown interest in once again accompanying Wanda to see various sights around the boroughs.

“It works for both of us,” Wanda had explained. “I keep him from being kidnapped, and he keeps me from having to hex catcallers.”

Bucky was out with Wanda right then, strolling through Greenpoint, which gave Steve time to run an errand he’d been thinking about for a few days. He’d researched it pretty extensively online, and he’d decided it was worth a try. Every little bit helped, after all.

“So apparently they’re brain food.” He shrugged at Sam and went back to testing plums. The two of them were in the produce section of an organic grocery store Sam had steered him towards. “They did a study on it and everything. Found that something in them helps improve memory. So I figured, why not?”

Sam chuckled. “So which option are you going to take? Surreptitiously hide plums in all of his food or just insist he eat a half-dozen or so at every meal?” 

“Neither.” Steve put another plum into the bag. “I thought I’d just put a bowl of them out on the table and let his appetite do the work for me.” He chuckled. “He eats everything I’ve got in the house. A couple of pounds of plums won’t last a week. And besides, they’re not the only brain food on my list.”

“Oh, there’s a list, is there?” Sam raised an eyebrow. “A list of brain food?” 

“A short one,” Steve confirmed with a smile. “Walnuts, apparently. I always thought that was just an old wives’ tale. You know, because they look like brains. But no, apparently there are a lot of health benefits to eating walnuts, and improved memory is one of them.” He paused. “And chocolate, too, but he’s been eating a lot of that lately anyway. I don’t know if I really need to buy him more of that.”

Sam grinned, shook his head. “It just so happens I have a list too, but not for brain food.” He bagged up a few plums and added them to his basket. “These will do nicely for the caramelized plum soup that I’ll be making.” He pursed his lips. “Try to be making, anyway. As a dessert, after steak saltimbocca.”

“God bless you.” Steve smirked at his own joke, then raised an eyebrow. “Are you auditioning for _Iron Chef_?”

Sam snorted at that. “Nah, man, I just like to cook.” They moved along the produce section, stopping in front of a selection of fresh herbs. He added some sage to his basket and flashed a grin at Steve. “And it keeps the lady happy.”

“Yeah, Sharon’s a real gourmand.” Steve grinned back. “She introduced me to Thai food, you know.”

He remembered the first time she’d brought back take-out from a local Thai place for him to try, just a couple of months into coming off the ice. He hadn’t even known what ‘Thai’ meant at the time - he’d still thought of the place as being called Siam - but he’d instantly developed a liking for the spicy flavors of the cuisine. In fact, it had become one of his favorite foods to eat with her when they’d been involved in their on-again, off-again relationship.

“No surprise there.” Sam shook his head. “We order out a few times a week, and nine times out of ten, she wants Thai. Larb, especially. Can’t get enough of it.” He glanced at Steve as they headed out of the produce section. “Yeah, the delivery guy knows us by name, and we’re putting his kids through college.”

“Oh, I remember larb.” Steve looked for the walnuts among the many barrels of GMO-free nuts. “We were coming back from a mission once, in her flying car, and we both wanted Thai food, but for some reason the GPS was on the fritz. We couldn’t seem to go the right way, and finally I looked out the window and asked where the hell we were, and she said, ‘I don’t know, some larb-less hell hole.’” He laughed, shaking his head. “The little things, right?”

Sam chuckled in return “Right. So…” He watched as Steve began to scoop walnuts from the barrel into a small paper bag. “You plan to leave bowls of walnuts around, too? Or is this where you get creative?”

“Bowls sound good.” Steve frowned at the paper bag of walnuts, decided it was too small, and started filling a larger one. “You’re the creative one when it comes to cooking, not me. I can make breakfast without screwing it up, but beyond that, I can’t do much more than sandwiches.”

“Hey, you can learn to be creative. My mom did.” Off Steve’s questioning look, Sam added, “When me and my sisters were kids, she’d get on these health food kicks, and we ended up with spinach hidden in banana bread, kale blended into fruit shakes.” An exaggerated shudder. “I shouldn’t even mention the broccoli muffins, but if I had to live with it, you should at least have to live with the imagery.”

“Broccoli muffins?” What little horror didn’t make it to Steve’s face at least came through in his voice. “How? Why?”

Sam shrugged. “It was the late ‘80s.” Apparently that was considered a sufficient explanation. “She used to drag my older sister to Jazzercise. I’m not even allowed to mention the leg warmers and the neon spandex in her presence.”

“I was told repeatedly that I should be glad I slept through the ‘80s.” Steve topped up the larger bag of walnuts and, satisfied, put it on the scale. “All right. That’s brain food checked off the list.” 

After all of that organic shopping, they ended up eating lunch at a place that served very greasy, very enormous hamburgers. (Sharon had found the place a few years back, and it ranked high on her carefully curated list of hamburger joints.)

Of course the burgers were delicious. 

\---

Bucky and Wanda ate their way around Greenpoint.

They started out at the Peter Pan Donut and Pastry Shop, where Bucky ate three donuts to Wanda’s one, though they each had a giant milkshake.

“It’s good,” Wanda decided. “But I’m not sure if it’s ‘you can tell this place has been open for sixty years’ good.”

“If they hear you,” Bucky said over the dregs of his peanut butter chocolate milkshake, “they won’t let you come back.”

Wanda smiled. “Is that a joke?”

Bucky was silent a moment. “I’m not sure.” 

Before they left, Bucky bought a box of donuts to take home and share with Steve. He and Wanda then spent some time walking around Monsignor McGolrick Park before stopping at a coffee shop known for its Swedish brews and Scandinavian snacks.

“Does that mean anything to you?” Wanda asked of her coffee with a very complicated Swedish name.

Bucky shook his head. “I don’t speak Swedish.” All the same, he bought a bag of Swedish coffee to take home.

They visited an art gallery, though neither of them had much to say about it and most of the paintings looked kind of splattery anyway. Not really what Bucky thought of when he thought of art at all, but probably he didn’t know what he was talking about.

He bought nothing from the giftshop.

On their way to a clothing boutique that Wanda had looked up online, they stopped at a bakery specializing in pies. After sharing a slice of wine-braised brisket pie, Wanda bought one and Bucky instead bought a chocolate bourbon pecan pie. 

He hung back at the clothing boutique and let Wanda browse for as long as she wanted, and he didn’t protest when she was ready to leave. She didn’t buy anything.

They ended the outing with lunch at a Russian restaurant. Bucky ordered white borscht served in a bread bowl, and it felt familiar and comforting, if a bit fancy.

“Steve won’t want to hear that though.”

Wanda looked at him for a moment. “No,” she finally said. “He probably won’t. But that doesn’t make it any less true.”

He didn’t order anything to bring home from the restaurant, but he took a picture of the place so that he could find it later.

Steve was already home when Bucky got there, and he watched Bucky unpack the donuts and the coffee and the pie and lay everything out on the counter.

“Where’d you guys go?” Steve asked.

“A lot of places.” Bucky opened the lid of the donut box and stepped back so Steve could choose one first. “But I only bought food from three of them.”

From over the breakfast bar, he could see a bowl overfilled with plums sitting on the dining room table. That hadn’t been there in the morning, but Bucky already had a donut in his hand.

“ _Only_ three places?” Steve paused, his strawberry-frosted Bavarian cream donut halfway to his mouth and an incredulous look on his face. “I guess I shouldn’t ask how much you ate at each place before you left, huh?”

“A lot,” Bucky said through a mouthful of chocolate donut with coconut shred topping. “Why, did you bring something good home?”

Steve’s face fell. “Aw, come on, Buck. There’s a huge bowl of fresh plums right over there.” He gestured to the dining room table, then pointed at the breakfast bar. “And a huge bowl of walnuts right here. All for you, I might add.”

Bucky finished off the donut and considered reaching for another one, but Steve clearly wanted him to eat the walnuts, so he took a handful of those instead. 

Still, he couldn’t help but mention that “chocolate bourbon pecan pie is better than plain walnuts.”

“Well, at least there’s chocolate in it,” Steve groused, biting into the donut. “So it’ll do a little of what the walnuts and plums are meant to do, anyway.”

Bucky chewed on his mouthful of walnuts.

“It’s memory food, Bucky.” Steve took another bite of his donut. “The walnuts and the plums and the chocolate too. They all help to improve your brain functions, especially memory.” He smiled, as if expecting something.

“So…” Bucky shoved another handful of walnuts in his mouth. “No more psychic therapy then?”

He was supposed to do that again in another week or so, but… 

“What?” Steve paused before taking the last bite of his donut, the quizzical look back on his face. “No, Bucky, the brain food’s meant to supplement the therapy, not replace it.” 

Bucky said nothing.

Steve sighed. “Look, I know you don’t like it too much, but the fact is you’re going to need to be in therapy for a long time.”

Still Bucky said nothing, but he didn’t have to. The nightmares had only gotten worse since psychic therapy; he now had very specific, horrible things to have nightmares about and he had ended up stupidly crawling into Steve’s bed more than once over the past few weeks. Or Steve had ended up coming into his room when Bucky had screamed himself into sweating, shivering semi-consciousness. 

The past few nights, he had simply started off the night in Steve’s bed. Neither of them had discussed it, but it had somehow happened anyway.

The nightmares weren’t so bad then.

He frowned over another handful of walnuts, decided he didn’t want to talk about therapy or nightmares, and instead said, “Want to watch a picture?”

“Sure.” Steve smiled easily. “You’ve got enough of them in your Netflix queue, anyway.”

They got about halfway through one of the pictures in Bucky’s very large Netflix queue - and halfway through the bowl of plums as well - when they both agreed that _Battlefield Earth_ wasn’t something they needed to continue to subject themselves to.

“I liked him a lot better in that picture where they swapped faces.” Bucky scowled and shut Netflix down. He needed a shower, which sounded like a better use of his time right then anyway. “What was it called?”

“ _Face/Off._ ” Steve rolled his eyes. “God, that picture was terrible. Does he only do terrible pictures?”

Bucky’s scowl deepened. “It wasn’t terrible. You just have bad taste.” 

“My taste is just fine.” Steve scowled right back at him. “That picture was the pits.”

“You liked _Hairspray_ ,” Bucky shot back. They had just watched that one last week - Steve’s choice. “And he was in that too. And you liked it.” 

“He was?” Steve’s eyebrows went up. “No way. I would’ve remembered that.”

Bucky snorted. “Now who needs the plums and walnuts?” 

On his way toward the shower, he couldn’t help but smirk at the stupid expression on Steve’s face. 

\---

After a minute or two spent tidying up the living room, Steve picked up the book he’d been reading off and on lately - Andrew Cockburn’s _Kill Chain: the Rise of the High-Tech Assassins_ , a book on drone warfare- and stretched out on the couch to wait for Bucky to finish up in the shower. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant read, but the topic was relevant enough that it seemed almost wrong not to read it. And besides, Steve reminded himself as he picked up a plum and began to munch it absently as he read, just because the truth wasn’t pleasant to discover didn’t make it any less true.

At some point, the water turned off in the bathroom down the hall. And shortly after that, Bucky came back out into the living room in his pajamas, his hair still slightly damp.

He stood in front of the couch for a long moment, as if he were uncertain about what he wanted to do next. And then without a word, he crawled onto the couch and over Steve, stretching out bodily on top of him, his head coming to rest on Steve’s chest.

Steve moved the book aside, holding it in one hand, and looked down at Bucky. A smile drifted onto his face. Bucky had come so far since that first night in D.C. From pulling a gun at the first hint of an embrace to flopping down on top of him and sleeping in the same bed at night.

“Hey, Buck.” Steve brought up the hand that wasn’t holding the book and rested it on Bucky’s back.

Bucky didn’t respond right away, and Steve could feel the gentle rise and fall of Bucky’s chest against his own stomach. Finally Bucky murmured, “I didn’t like psychic therapy.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, “it was pretty strange.” He hadn’t been prepared for how real it had felt - not like sitting at the pictures, but like being in the middle of things as they’d been happening. Except that he couldn’t do a thing about what was happening. “But it’s still something you’ve got to do.” 

Bucky scowled into the fabric of Steve’s shirt. “You say.”

“Me and the court.” Steve put the book down on the coffee table - facedown and open, as he didn’t have a bookmark - and brought his other hand up to rest on Bucky’s back. “And Ms. Rosenthal and Dr. McCoy, for starters.” 

“Well, I didn’t like seeing Ms. Grey,” Bucky said.

Steve smiled slightly and began to rub Bucky’s back. “You didn’t like seeing Dr. Levitt in the beginning either.” 

“That’s different…” Bucky started to say, but the words melted into a sigh and his whole body began to relax as Steve continued to rub his back. 

“Different?” Steve’s smile broadened as he felt the tension leave Bucky’s body. It felt vindicating in a way he didn’t have words for. Bucky only ever seemed to relax when he was in close proximity to Steve - the closer the proximity, the more he relaxed. When they lay in bed together, their arms around one another, all the weight seemed to drift away from Bucky. And now that Bucky lay stretched out on top of him on the couch, it didn’t seem like there was tension in a single muscle.

He continued smiling, his fingertips kneading at the spot between Bucky’s shoulderblades. If he could always be responsible for making Bucky feel this relaxed - this at home - then he’d be happy. And if he could keep Bucky safe and comfortable and on the path to recovery by just holding him as close as possible, then he’d be as happy as it was possible to be.

“Different how?”

“Different…” Bucky whispered, and Steve wondered if Bucky had already lost the thread of the conversation. But a moment later, he added, “You shouldn’t have… seen that. Any of that.”

Steve was silent for a moment, though he continued to rub Bucky’s back. Of course Bucky would be embarrassed. Who would have wanted to be seen at the absolute mercy of a man like Lukin? Bucky had been helpless, entirely helpless, and Steve and Natasha had been spectators to the humiliation and agony he’d suffered. Memories like those were meant to be private, and now even that level of privacy - the space inside his very own mind - had been denied to Bucky.

“I’m not glad I saw it,” he eventually replied, “but I don’t wish I hadn’t.” He reached up a hand as he spoke and absently began stroking Bucky’s hair. “I wish it hadn’t happened to you, but I don’t want to pretend it didn’t.” He paused, craning his neck to look down at Bucky. “Do you?”

Bucky didn’t look up, instead shivering under Steve’s touch and relaxing further until he was limp. “I don’t know,” he breathed. “I just… I don’t know.”

“I do.” Steve smiled as he felt Bucky sag against him and continued stroking Bucky’s hair. “I know. Maybe it isn’t fun to remember these things, but it’s the only way for you to get back everything they stole from you.” He rested his chin gently against the top of Bucky’s head, his hand moving to the back of Bucky’s head and neck. “And I want that for you. I want you to get better.”

Bucky’s only response was a little hum of affirmation. Or maybe relaxation. 

Still smiling, Steve let his hand drift back down to Bucky’s back and shoulders. He massaged Bucky’s already relaxed muscles, pausing only when his fingertips encountered the scar tissue around Bucky’s left shoulder and the unyielding metal on the other side of it. But he didn’t pull back. The shape of the prosthetic was familiar and lifelike, though the texture was strange even through the fabric of Bucky’s T-shirt. And despite the fact that he’d found the metal arm disconcerting at first, he’d gotten used to it over the past few months.

He brought a hand back up to Bucky’s head, stroking the back of his head and neck even as he left his other hand resting on Bucky’s metal shoulder. And he suddenly became aware that Bucky’s breathing had gotten very steady and even.

“Bucky?” He looked down to see Bucky’s eyes closed, a peaceful look on his face. “Did you fall asleep?”

Bucky’s lack of response answered that question, and Steve felt a sappy smile spreading over his face as he looked down at him. If Bucky felt safe and comfortable enough to fall asleep right there on top of him, then he really was getting better. And Steve felt pleased with himself in a way he couldn’t fully explain to have been responsible for it. His heart rose in his chest, the smile on his face broadened, and he realized that he was exactly where he wanted to be.

He picked up the book again and, careful not to shift too much and disturb Bucky as he slept, started to read again.

After a while - he wasn’t sure how long; he’d lost track of time, but he was several chapters into his book and Bucky hadn’t moved - the front door rattled open and Natasha walked in, carrying a plastic bag of what appeared to be boxes of takeout food.

“Rogers,” she said by way of greeting, setting the bag down on the table. “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.”

“Hi Nat.” He smiled over at her and set the book down on the coffee table. “It’s a nice day, all right. What brings you here?”

Natasha smirked and shook her head. “There’s this new Mexican/Mediterranean fusion place that just opened a few blocks away.” She shrugged. “I happened to be in the area. I thought if anyone’s going to appreciate a shawarma taco, it’d be you boys.”

“Shawarma tacos?” He cocked an eyebrow. “That’s… not something I would’ve thought of.” He brightened. “But it’s something worth trying. You’re just going to have to set it up on the coffee table.” He gestured down at Bucky, who hadn’t so much as twitched. “He seems like he really needed that nap.”

Her eyes trailed from Steve down to Bucky, her expression softening for a moment before she looked sharply up at Steve. “Did you pet his hair?”

“Yeah,” Steve replied warily, tentatively trying to sit up and realizing it was a losing battle. Bucky didn’t stir. “Why?” 

“You pet him.” She smiled, shook her head, and brought the bag of food over to the coffee table. “You’re stuck there for the foreseeable future. Hope you’re comfortable.” 

“That’s silly.” Steve shook his head and looked down at Bucky. He gave Bucky’s shoulder a slight shake. “Hey Bucky? Wake up. Natasha’s here with food.” There was no response from Bucky save for a muffled snort, and Steve looked back up after a moment. “Wow. He’s really out, isn’t he?”

Natasha raised an eyebrow and began unpacking the food and setting the boxes on the table. “What did I say?”

“Are you trying to tell me I petted him to sleep?” Steve looked over at Natasha, having to twist his head around to see her properly. “And now he won’t wake up because petting his head is some kind of narcotic or something?”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you.” Natasha opened a box that contained four perfectly packed shawarma tacos. “Though maybe the scent of the food will gradually arouse him, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Are you kidding?” Steve’s eyebrow arched even more. “He won’t even wake up for food?” He shook his head, trying to shift around, and flinched when he felt Bucky’s metal fingertips digging into his side.

“He’s like a cat,” Steve said as he slumped back into position, his fingers threading absently through Bucky’s hair. “Like one of those alley cats that always hangs out on your fire escape, and you feel sorry for it so you leave a bowl of food out for it one night, and then it shows up every day looking for more, and one day you leave the window open and it just comes right in and makes itself at home and before you know it, you have a cat.”

“Wow, Rogers.” Natasha cocked her head to one side, a look of real amusement on her face. “You’ve put some thought into that.”

“Not really.” Steve reached over for a shawarma taco. “It just came to me. But it makes sense.” He looked down at Bucky with something between affection and annoyance. “I’m just surprised he wouldn’t wake up to eat. If I could ever count on him to do anything, it was eat.”

“Looks like you’re stuck with him.” Natasha took a bite of her shawarma taco, the shell crunching loudly. She only just caught a handful of tahini and salsa covered meat in her hand. “Not bad.”

“No, not bad.” Steve bit into his own taco and found it delicious in the sort of way he couldn’t have predicted. And as he lay there on the couch, pinned underneath Bucky and unable to move, he reflected that being stuck there in his own house with the two people he cared about more than anyone else in the world wasn’t bad either. In fact, he couldn’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be.

“Not bad at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, concerns? Feedback is warmly welcomed, encouraged, and hoped for!


	11. Edible Arrangements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Natasha turned the attached card to read it and felt her heart give a little leap. Handwritten in small, neat Cyrillic letters was a short, simple message that was purely James._
> 
> _**Sorry I shot you that one time.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If they're ["speaking like this,"] then they are speaking in Russian.

**Park Slope, Brooklyn**   
**late May 2015**

Bucky sat in the same checkered armchair in Dr. Levitt’s office, turning a peppermint candy over on his tongue. Thirty minutes of the visit remained.

Lately he had begun to talk more during the visits. Not for the whole hour; that was a lot of fucking talking, and Dr. Levitt seemed more than capable of filling the air for the both of them. But he had begun to talk a little bit, in fits and starts, and Dr. Levitt seemed okay with that. He hadn’t slapped Bucky or yelled at him or even called him an idiot and he let him eat as many peppermint candies from the bowl as he wanted to.

On the last visit, he had taken five of them, and Dr. Levitt hadn’t said a word about it.

They had been talking about psychic therapy for the past couple of visits, and it was Bucky’s turn to reply. Which was why he kept turning the peppermint over on his tongue and staring out the window.

No one interesting was walking by. Without turning his head, Bucky said, “I didn’t want them to see any of it.”

“Why not?” Dr. Levitt leaned forward slightly in his chair. “How did you feel about them being there for the session?”

“I…” Bucky fiddled with the plastic candy wrapper. “I don’t know.” A beat, then, “Stupid.”

“Stupid?” Dr. Levitt repeated. “Can you elaborate on that?”

Bucky let his gaze drift to the clock. Twenty-eight minutes to go. His gaze fell into his lap. He turned the peppermint over again on his tongue.

“Stupid,” he whispered. 

Dr. Levitt said nothing for a long moment. Then, after another minute or so had ticked off the clock, he settled back in his chair.

“I think the word you were trying to find was ‘embarrassed’, not ‘stupid’.” He shook his head. “And I do understand. It’s a very hard thing, to know that someone else has seen you at your lowest point. We all have things we keep to ourselves, things we would be mortified if anyone else knew.” He steepled his fingers. “But in your case, I think these feelings are actually quite helpful to your recovery - if they’re handled the right way, of course.”

Bucky folded and unfolded the candy wrapper without looking up. “Why?”

“Because your embarrassment is the key to how you’re going to recover,” Dr. Levitt said calmly. “Or at least a step in the right direction. Let me ask you a question.” A moment, then, “What exactly was it that made you feel ‘stupid’, as you put it?”

Bucky chewed on his lip. “They… they keep saying that it’s not…” He twisted the wrapper until it crackled loudly. “Not my fault, but…”

That wasn’t true. He knew it wasn’t true. He had done all of those things. 

He shook his head. “I know it’s not true.”

“And you find that embarrassing?” Dr. Levitt’s voice had no confusion in it. “Why?”

“I killed a lot of people,” Bucky said slowly. Quietly. “I know I did. That’s why I was in prison. And they’ll… they’ll see it.”

Ugly images flickered across his mind: being strapped in the chair, the bit forced into his mouth. Begging the doctor to make it stop, make it all stop, so he could finally rest. The General slapping him across the face, pulling his hair, and finally screaming at him.

_You are mine, Soldier! You belong to me!_

He squeezed his eyes shut. “All of it.”

“That’s what I mean.” Dr. Levitt nodded. “You’re embarrassed by the fact that they’ll be able to see you doing these things. But think about _why_ you did them for a moment, and then tell me how you feel.”

Bucky opened his eyes and stared at the wrapper in his hand for a long moment. “When he sees everything…” He crushed the wrapper suddenly. Shook his head and let his gaze drift back to the window.

He wasn’t ready to think about that.

“I don’t know.”

Dr. Levitt didn’t pause for more than a brief moment. “And what has your friend Steve said about the things he’s seen so far? Or about any of the things he knows you were involved in?”

Bucky turned his head and glowered at him. “I told you already. I just told you.”

Dr. Levitt held Bucky’s gaze levelly, absorbing the glare but not returning it. “Then don’t you think, if so many people are telling you it wasn’t your fault, there may be something to it?”

“They’re wrong.” Again Bucky began to twist the candy wrapper. “I know they’re wrong. I did those things.”

“Are they?” Dr. Levitt’s tone said he already knew what he thought the right answer was. “Are they wrong? And are you really the one responsible for those things that you did?”

“I keep…” Bucky bit his lip. Crumpled the wrapper and tossed it on the table.

Why couldn’t he make the stupid old man _understand_? Why was it so fucking hard for _everyone_ \- not just Dr. Levitt, but Steve and even Natasha - to understand anything?

“I keep telling you.” He blew out an angry, frustrated breath. “I did those things. I did all of those things. I know I did those things.” He took his baseball cap off, ran a hand through his hair, then parked the cap back on his head.

He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He reached into the bowl for another peppermint, yanked the wrapper off, and popped the candy into his mouth, then began twisting the wrapper back and forth.

“I killed a lot of people.” The anger drained out of him suddenly. He stared at the wrapper in his hands. “I don’t even know how many.”

Dr. Levitt nodded slowly, a strange look coming onto his face, and sat quietly for a moment. Finally, he spoke.

“I know you did those things.” His voice was quiet, calm. Always calm. “No one’s saying that you didn’t. And I won’t lie to you, you are going to spend the rest of your life dealing with that fact in one way or another. But the real question is still out there.” 

“When they know…” Bucky closed his eyes. Took a breath. “When they see how many… they won’t… they won’t want…”

He couldn’t make himself finish the sentence. 

“Maybe you ought to give them the chance to surprise you,” Dr. Levitt responded. “I’d be willing to bet they’ll still want to help you.”

Bucky cracked an eye open. “I tried to kill them, too.”

“And they’re still helping you.” Dr. Levitt raised an eyebrow. “Steve wants you to live with him. Does that count for anything?”

“I’m required to live with him, that’s all.” Even as Bucky said the words, he knew they weren’t true. All the same, he added, “The court said so.”

Dr. Levitt’s eyebrow arched higher in response. Bucky looked away and began fiddling with the candy wrapper again.

“I think you know as well as I do that he wants you to live with him.” Dr. Levitt’s voice was still soft, but insistent. “And I also think you know that he’s very deeply invested in your recovery. He knows what happened to you, he knows what you did, and he doesn’t fault you for it in the slightest.”

“That’s stupid.” Bucky scowled. “He’s not thinking. None of them are thinking. I tried to kill them. Repeatedly.”

His chest ached at the thought of it, at the thought of hurting any of them. Of having to kill any of them. It was a new, awful feeling, and he didn’t like it at all.

“I didn’t want to do it,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to do any of it.”

“Ahh,” Dr. Levitt said softly. “You didn’t want to do it, and yet you were made to do it anyway.” He nodded. “That’s the beginning.”

Bucky suddenly felt very tired. After the session was over, and after the post-session pancake house visit with Steve, all he wanted to do was crawl into bed and stay there.

All the same, he wanted to know. “The beginning of what?”

“Your recovery.” Dr. Levitt glanced over at the clock, then back to Bucky. “The most important part of which is coming to terms with the fact that what happened wasn’t your fault. You’ll have a lot to think about, and I’d say you’ve found the perfect place to begin: knowing that you didn’t want to do any of it.” He smiled again. “This was your best session yet.”

Bucky said nothing to that, and when Steve asked him over pancakes what had been discussed in the session, Bucky scowled and told him it had all been stupid.

Because it was.

Stupid.

Probably.

\---

Two days later, in the ugly green office of Darien Nash (though he had since added more pictures drawn by his kids, it looked like), Bucky finally broke his ten minute silence.

“Dr. Levitt keeps saying it’s not my fault.” He stared at the large bouquet made of fruit prominently displayed on Nash’s desk. “Steve says the same thing. Everyone is fucking stupid.”

“Sounds like it’s getting under your skin.” Nash plucked a strawberry off of the fruit bouquet and popped it into his mouth. “Isn’t it funny how sometimes the littlest things can irritate you like that?”

“Your fruit bouquet irritates me,” Bucky said peevishly, and when Nash laughed at that, Bucky couldn’t help but smile a little bit.

Just a little bit.

He also couldn’t help but ask, “Why do you have a fruit bouquet?”

“It’s an Edible Arrangement.” Nash smiled. “One of my other clients sent it over as a thank-you gift. He’s two years into dealing with his PTSD, and he’s holding up a lot better than he ever thought he would.” Nash removed a grape from the bouquet and ate it, then gestured at the thing. “You want a bite, help yourself. This thing won’t stay fresh more than a day, I don’t think, and I can’t eat it all myself.”

Bucky stared at the Edible Arrangement for a long moment, then selected a pineapple cut into the shape of a star. It tasted exactly like a pineapple should taste, though he wasn’t sure if he had expected it to really taste any different.

“Why would someone send you fruit as a thank you?” 

“Oh, these things are popular lately.” Nash popped another grape into his mouth. “See, the logic goes like this. Some occasions - birthday, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, whatever - people like to send flowers as a present. But the flowers aren’t good for anything but looking at, and they die in a few days anyway. So these guys came up with good-looking bouquets made out of fruit, so you can eat them while you admire them.” He chuckled. “Pretty good idea, I’d say. It’s one of those things everyone wishes they’d been the one to think of first.”

Bucky ate a fancy looking slice of cantaloupe. “And this makes you feel…” He chewed on the cantaloupe and stared at the fruit bouquet. “Thanked? Appreciated?”

So easily?

“Hey, even a two-minute phone call from the guy would’ve made me feel appreciated.” Nash leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Everybody likes to be acknowledged, at least, for the things they do. But yeah, I’d say getting a fruit bouquet that I can eat and share around with people in the office makes me feel pretty good.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say to that, so he ate a strawberry off the bouquet instead.

“So you’re getting tired of hearing people tell you it wasn’t your fault?” Nash raised an eyebrow. “Maybe we can figure out a way to make that a little less irritating for you.”

“I could tell them all to shut up.” Bucky twirled the strawberry skewer between his fingers. “But Steve never shuts up.” A frown settled onto his face. “Ever.”

Nash laughed at that. “We’ve all got one of those in our life, don’t we? For me, it’s my brother-in-law. Nice guy, love him to death, but the boy just won’t stop yapping.” He chuckled and took another pineapple star from the bouquet. “Thing is, there are people who can do companionable silence and people who can’t. And, there are times when the silence just needs to be broken. It’s my job to help you figure out when those times are.”

“Companionable silence?” Bucky set the skewer down and looked at Nash. 

Maybe he was willing to listen a little bit.

\---

The next day, Wanda accompanied Bucky to the Edible Arrangements branch on Clinton Street. 

Together they examined the fruit bouquets on display, pored over the colorful brochures featuring standard arrangements, and watched the digital presentation reminding them that “Memorial Day is only a few days away! Order your special, festive arrangement now!”

“For forty dollars, you can also order a Gourmet Shareable salted caramel apple.” Wanda set one of the brochures aside. “Though I’m not sure a single apple is worth that price, no matter how gourmet.”

Bucky frowned. “No.”

“For six hundred dollars, you can order Field of Daisies - Decadence,” Wanda continued. “Very decadent. We could make our own many times over for that price.”

The salesgirl behind the counter scowled at that.

After a bit more debate, Bucky ended up ordering three Orange Citrus Blossom Swizzle Apple Fruit Truffle arrangements, which included chocolate covered apples. Or, as the salesgirl put it, “semi-sweet chocolate dipped apple fruit truffles with white swizzle.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but the arrangements were pleasing to look at and seemed very edible, which was the entire point. So that was what he went with, and he also bought a card to go with each arrangement.

Wanda helped him figure out what to write on the cards. The salesgirl said each arrangement would be delivered the next day.

So that was good.

Probably.

\---

Natasha’s buzzer never rang. Which was what surprised her most about her buzzer ringing.

Puzzled, she got up from the desk where she’d been sitting at her laptop. The buzzer’s viewscreen was mounted beside the front door, and it was probably simple enough to use. But before she’d made it two steps, JARVIS’ voice broke in.

“A delivery for you, Ms. Romanoff. It’s been cleared by security. I take it you weren’t expecting anything?”

“I didn’t place any orders.” 

Natasha was more puzzled than concerned; since moving SHIELD into the Tower, Tony had substantially augmented his already-impressive security system. Metal detectors, hard-object scanners, highly sensitive explosive detectors, and more automated defenses than were probably necessary were layered throughout the building, especially on the ground floor. If this delivery had been anything remotely dangerous, it would have been stopped by any one of a handful of those security measures.

No, she wasn’t worried. But she didn’t know what this delivery was, or who might have sent it either, and that was cause enough for puzzlement. 

Which very quickly turned to amusement when the delivery was brought to her door.

“I believe they call that an Edible Arrangement,” JARVIS observed in his dry manner. “And if I were capable of making such a judgement, I would say it looks rather delicious.”

Natasha turned the attached card to read it and felt her heart give a little leap. Handwritten in small, neat Cyrillic letters was a short, simple message that was purely James.

_Sorry I shot you that one time._

She couldn’t help but smile as she brought the arrangement into the living room and set it on the coffee table. What had prompted him to send it? Had Rogers said something, or had Wilson? Or had it been simply a result of what had happened during that therapy session with Jean Grey?

She turned the card over in her hands, reading over James’ simple, heartfelt words and aching with how much she cared for him. And how much she wished she could tell him.

Well, she could at least tell him how she feel about his present.

She picked up her phone and dialed his number, smiling as she looked at the card. And when he picked up on the other end, the smile was clear in her voice when she spoke.

[“Are you going to help me eat the arrangement you sent?”]

[“It’s your arrangement,”] James said instantly. [“It’s your…”] She could practically hear him scowling through the phone, and he switched into English suddenly. “It’s your Orange Citrus Blossom Swizzle Apple Fruit Truffle arrangement.” A beat, then, [“I don’t know how to translate that.”]

[“I don’t think ‘Swizzle’ translates.”] Her smile broadened as she pictured the look on his face. [“But it was very sweet of you to send it to me.”]

She wondered whether she sounded as stupid as she felt at that moment. For everything she felt, everything she wanted to say to him and show him and give to him, only the tiniest fraction of it ever made it to the surface.

But there was nothing else to be done.

[“You didn’t have to apologize, you know.”] She ran a fingertip along the edge of the card, picturing him saying the words he’d written. Picturing the look on his face and the tone of his voice. [“I can’t really hold that against you. After all, I shot you too. And the outcome would have been a lot worse if you hadn’t been wearing those goggles.”]

James was silent for a long moment. Long enough that she began to fear she’d made a mistake bringing it up. But then he murmured, [“That was a very impressive shot.”]

[“It was all I had,”] she responded, relief flooding through her. Only James could possibly admire her for almost succeeding at her attempt to kill him. [“But like I said, you didn’t owe me an apology. What happened wasn’t your fault, and I don’t blame you for it.”]

[“That again.”] He snorted. [“Not you too. I just… I wanted…”] His derisiveness seemed to unravel somewhere. [“I wanted to… to give you… something.”]

Natasha’s heart gave a giant twinge at that. Such unrestrained sweetness… she didn’t deserve it.

[“And I’m glad you did.”] She dredged up a smile. [“But I’d be even gladder if you’d come over and help me eat this thing.”]

[“I can come over,”] he said quietly. [“Whenever you want.”] 

[“Now’s good.”] She smiled, though she knew he couldn’t see it. [“I’ll be here.”]

[“I don’t want to eat all your ‘Twizzles.’ ‘Swizzles.’ Whatever.”] She could imagine him rolling his eyes right there. [“They’re for you. But I can… I’ll be there soon.”] He disconnected the call without another word.

She looked down at the phone in her hand, finding herself hoping for some excuse to get close to him when he arrived. To get her fingers into his hair, to put her hands on him, even to stand or sit close beside him. Anything to show him, in some small way, how she felt about him.

There really was no hope for her.

\---

Bucky left a note by Steve’s Edible Arrangement - _Eat your fruit. Back soon_. - and took Steve’s bike into Manhattan. He didn’t expect Steve back for a while anyway; he was having an important, sudden SHIELD meeting with Maria Hill and Colonel Rhodes that morning, and so he wouldn’t miss the bike. 

Still, Bucky needed to get one of his own. 

The drive to Avengers Tower didn’t take long at all, and then he was through the lobby of the tower and into the elevators, and apparently he had security clearance for all of that. None of the security guards looked twice at him and JARVIS welcomed him back, and he wondered if any of that was a good idea. 

If HYDRA got to him, they would enjoy that level of access to the Avengers and SHIELD. The General would enjoy that especially.

He pushed the thought roughly aside. Later, he’d think about it, but not right then.

On the walk down a very long hallway to Natasha’s apartment, he ran into Sam Wilson coming out of what must have been his apartment. 

“Hey, look who it is.” Wilson smiled and raised a hand in greeting. “Mr. Fruit Florist. Thank you for that, by the way. And the card.”

_Sorry I destroyed your car and ripped one of your wings off and tried to kill you._ Bucky had given that card some thought, and Wanda had helped him put it into words.

But face-to-face with Wilson, Bucky didn’t know what to say. After a moment, he managed, “I hope you like oranges.”

“I like the whole thing.” Wilson shrugged. “And just for the record, I accept your apology. Not that it was absolutely necessary, mind you. Insurance took care of the car and everybody was pretty understanding about the wings.” He grinned. “And hey, now I’ve got a new pair made by the Crown Prince of Wakanda himself. So it all worked out.”

Bucky frowned. “I guess.” 

“And you’re working on yourself too,” Wilson continued. “You keep doing that. Things are already beginning to turn around for you, aren’t they?”

Bucky’s frowned deepened. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Wilson nodded. “It always feels that way in the beginning.” He raised his eyebrows, as if suddenly remembering something. “Listen, gotta run. Duty calls, and if I’m not where I’m supposed to be in the next few minutes…”

“Mission?” Bucky asked.

Wilson smiled. “Brunch date with Sharon. She knows all the good places.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’ll eat all the fruit. I already ate most of the honeydew.” Halfway down the hall, he added, “Say hi to Natasha for me.”

Bucky chewed on his lip. How had Wilson known who he was going to visit?

All the same, when Natasha opened the door, Bucky said, [“Sam Wilson told me to say hi.”]

\---

[“Did he?”] Natasha arched an eyebrow, smiling ever so slightly as she let him in. [“I wonder how he knew where you were going?”]

Of course James would have sent an Edible Arrangement to Wilson as well, after the events of the therapy session with Jean Grey. Just as he’d probably sent one to Rogers. She wondered how many he’d be sending over the course of the next year or so, as more of his memories were uncovered.

[“So how did you get the idea to send a fruit basket?”]

[“Social worker, and it’s a fruit bouquet.”] James stepped into her apartment, eyes sweeping over the very tidy, undecorated living room. [“He had one, and it… it seemed like a good idea.”]

Natasha’s smile quirked at the corners of her mouth again. [“And did you help him eat his too?”]

James scowled at her. [“He offered.”] 

[“So did I.”] She gestured at the arrangement he’d sent her, which sat unwrapped and prominently displayed in the middle of her otherwise bare coffee table. [“I hope you like chocolate.”]

[“The ‘Swizzles’ are for you.”] He hesitated a moment, looking between her and the couch, and then ended up standing by the wall of windows and staring out at the city. [“Good view.”]

[“From this high up, every view turns out to be a good one.”] She came up behind and beside him, her arms dangling uselessly by her sides. [“What’s on your mind, James?”]

She watched his face carefully; he chewed on his lip and stared very hard out the window, as if he were turning a question - possibly several - over in his mind.

Finally he said, [“You don’t decorate. But Steve said you helped him pick out all of the furniture and decorations for his place.”] He glanced at her. [“You’re not planning on staying?”]

[“You don’t miss much, do you?”] 

She smiled at him, clasping her hands behind her back to keep from putting one of them gently on his cheek. She looked around the sparsely-furnished room and saw something that resembled an extended-stay hotel rather than a home. She’d known for a long time, on some baseline level, that living in the Tower wasn’t a permanent solution for her. That she would need to strike out on her own at some point, that living in such a fishbowl wasn’t healthy for her, and that sooner or later she was going to be overwhelmed by it all. Being constantly surrounded by her coworkers, hemmed in by layers of technology, the world held at bay but she herself held prisoner inside…

[“I don’t know how long I’ll stay.”] She realized she’d been staring out at the city without seeing it. [“But I don’t know where I’d go either.”]

She’d never really lived anywhere that felt like home. She hadn’t decorated her apartment in D.C. any more than she’d decorated the suite of rooms she was living in now, and before that? Well, there’d been the Barton farm, and nothing before that worth even considering.

[“So I guess it’s a dilemma.”] She dug her fingernails into her palms, trying to fight it, and suddenly thought, _Why bother?_

She laid a hand gently on the small of his back.

James stilled for a moment, a strange expression flitting across his face. He didn’t move or pull away though. [“Would you go far?”] He didn’t look at her. [“You could go anywhere you wanted.”]

[“I honestly don’t know.”] 

The muscles of his back felt solid - but not tense - under her hand, and she remembered things vividly in that moment that made her squeeze her eyes shut against the flood of emotions that came with those memories. The way he’d once been able to smile at her. His reassuring weight and bulk next to her on the worn sofa as they watched American films to work on her accent, or in bed as they lay entwined around each other. The terrifying euphoria that had swept over her when he’d blurted out that he loved her. It had been like jumping out of a plane with no parachute: she’d been dizzy with fear and panic, certain it would be the end of her, but it had been worth it to feel like she could fly.

She moved closer to him, her arm sliding around his waist, and told the cautionary voices in her mind to shut up. 

[“I can’t think of any place better to be right now.”]

Several seconds ticked by in silence, and again she found herself watching the myriad of small expressions that worked themselves over James’ face.

Finally, quietly, he said, [“I wanted to come over.”]

[“I wanted you to come over.”] She eyed him. [“Are you glad you did?”]

He looked at her suddenly. [“Are you going to eat your fruit?”]

[“Are you going to help me?”] She smiled back at him, her arm still around his waist, and fought down the urge to trail the fingers of her other hand up and down his shirt front.

He scowled, but didn’t hold the look. [“Are you going to keep asking me questions?”]

Her smile quirked up another few millimeters. [“Are you ever going to answer one of my questions?”]

His eyes widened at that. [“You’re impossible.”] His tone was somewhere between amazed and annoyed. 

It took everything she had not to kiss him right then. It was only the knowledge that he was far from ready, that it wouldn’t be fair to him, and that it was likely to do more harm than good that kept her from giving in to the urge. But it hurt to hold it back, and she didn’t trust herself to be able to keep doing it forever.

[“Come on.”] She tugged at him with the arm still around his waist. [“Sit with me and talk. And help me eat the fruit.”]

She led him to the couch, and for a minute or two, they silently chewed at cantaloupe and chocolate-covered apple pieces. But she couldn’t stay silent. There was too much pleasure to be had in hearing his voice, in doing something as normal as sitting and talking to him, for her to quietly snack in his presence.

[“So did your social worker tell you that you ought to apologize to me?”] She toyed with one of the Swizzles. [“Or was that something you came up with on your own?”]

James spent a long moment chewing on an orange slice. [“He said that fruit bouquets can help people feel appreciated.”] He set the rind down on a napkin, then plucked a honeydew skewer from the arrangement. [“And I…”] He stared very hard at the skewer. [“I wanted... “]

Natasha waited.

[“We have to do more psychic therapy.”] His mouth thinned into a line. [“And when… when you, when you both… see everything…”] He swallowed heavily. [“Maybe… you’ll be glad… of this.”]

Natasha thought of everything that had yet to be uncovered. Everything the two of them had done, everything they’d meant to one another, everything she still knew but had held back from telling him. She thought of the things she herself had seen, done, and been a part of. The unmarked graves in Vladivostok. Caracas and Medellin. Olga Kuznetsova.

[“Maybe you will.”] She crunched into the Swizzle. [“You don’t know.”]

[“No,”] he said quietly, eyes focused on the honeydew skewer. [“I don’t know anything.”]

[“But you will.”] She set down what was left of the fruit in her hand and turned to face him directly. [“And when you do, I wonder what it will all mean to you.”]

[“I killed a lot of people.”] He rolled the skewer between his fingers. [“I know I did, even if I don’t remember it. I know there’s nothing else good there, even if…”] He shook his head, then ate the honeydew in one bite. 

[“There is.”] She shifted on the sofa, turning her body so she could face him full-on. [“There are good things in there too. I know that for a fact.”]

[“Yeah. Steve says.”] He seemed to wilt, leaning back against the couch and tilting his face toward the ceiling. [“But no matter what else is there, I’m going to spend the rest of my life dealing with the fact that I killed a lot of people.”] He pulled his black baseball cap off his head, ran a hand through his hair, and murmured, [“One way or another.”]

[“I know how that feels.”] She moved closer to him. [“I’ve been dealing with that every day of my life for the past ten years.”]

She remembered what it had been like in the beginning. The nightmares. The uncertainty. The fear that she’d never be able to shake off what she’d been, what she’d done. That no matter how hard she tried, she would always be what they had made her. That she could never make up for it, and that the feeble amount of black she’d managed to scrawl in the ledger of her life would always be overwhelmed by the tidal wave of red.

[“But you’re going to have an easier time than I did.”] She reached out a hand, paused for a brief moment, and then brushed a lock of his hair over his ear. He leaned into her touch. [“I had help, but not as much as you do. I didn’t have the kind of therapists you’ve got. I didn’t have someone like Rogers, who remembered me from before. And I didn’t have someone who’d been through the same thing I’d been through to help me.”]

[“The nightmares haven’t stopped.”] He closed his eyes. [“I’ve been… I’ve been sleeping in his bed. Almost every night. And that helps a bit, but…”] He sucked in his breath sharply. [“It’s only going to get worse. It’s never going to end.”]

[“No, it’s never going to end.”] 

Natasha stroked his hair again. She’d lived her whole life on the principle that lies could be made to stand in for the truth wherever expediency dictated, but she’d had to unlearn that lesson. Harshly, sometimes, and repeatedly. A lie could blunt the edges of a cruel reality, but it couldn’t last forever. Sooner or later, the truth would come through and rip the illusion to shreds. And the idea of lying to James now about something so fundamental made her feel ill, regardless of how much better it might make him feel in the moment. She couldn’t deny him the truth. 

[“Things like that don’t ever go away completely.”] She continued stroking his hair, getting her fingertips into it. [“And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. But that’s not to say it’s never going to get better. It did for me, and it will for you.”] She paused for a moment, then smiled at him. [“I didn’t know you’d kept up the sleeping arrangements, though. I thought it was only the once.”] 

[“No,”] he murmured, but he sounded distracted. His eyes were closed and he was leaning pretty heavily into her touch. [“It’s been… it’s been several nights.”]

[“Have the nightmares been that bad?”] She let his head droop further, still stroking his hair. At this rate, he’d have his head in her lap before too long. [“They’ll let up in time. Or at least they’ll be less frequent.”]

His only response was a contented hum low in his throat. She continued to stroke his hair, he continued to lean further into her touch, and as she gradually moved back along the couch, he followed her. And, just as she’d predicted, he leaned so far over that his head simply drifted down into her lap. 

Her heart felt as though it was swelling in her chest as she sat there looking down at him and stroking his hair. With his eyes closed and his face slack, he had lost that haunted look he’d carried around with him for so long. He looked peaceful. Contented. Happy, even. 

He looked the way she remembered him looking when he’d fallen asleep next to her so many years ago. She’d come back from a mission in Belarus to find him there waiting for her, and after they’d desperately made love, they’d lain there in her bed and held each other. She’d been unable to fall asleep, the residual energy of her mission still humming in her brain, but he’d drifted off to sleep as she’d watched. And the change that had come over his face had struck a chord with her, so that she’d lain there for a long time just looking at him. Looking, and loving him.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. She was beginning to think that maybe James had fallen asleep, when he whispered something that made her heart clench in her chest. 

[“We’ve done this before…”] He didn’t open his eyes. [“Haven’t we?”]

[“What do you think?”] She burrowed her fingertips into his hair, getting down to his scalp and combing through the long strands of it. It was a far cry from winding the little ringlets around her fingers, but she supposed that the length of his hair wasn’t all bad. Not if she could still get her fingers into it, anyway.

His hand came to rest on her knee. [“I think so… Maybe...”] His eyes remained closed. [“I think so.”]

Natasha wondered how it could be possible for thoughts and feelings like this to still be there in James’ mind after everything that had been done to him. How he could so easily attach himself to Rogers after being specifically conditioned to hate him, or how he could remember the way she’d used to wear her hair or pet him to sleep after being so mind-warped he’d coldly blown a hole through her. It didn’t make any kind of logical sense. And yet…

Her mouth twisted wryly. Rogers would have said that it was because hearts were stronger than minds. That there were things that couldn’t be wiped away, not if they were rooted deeply enough. And despite her usual tendency to dismiss much of Rogers’ rhetoric as hyperbole, she was having a hard time finding him wrong on this account. Especially when the evidence was lying docilely in her lap.

She continued stroking his hair until his breathing became regular and shallow. And when she was sure he had drifted off to sleep, she leaned down and whispered in his ear.

[“I love you, James.”]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey, here we are, a day late and a dollar short, but alive and posting. 
> 
> Comments, feedback, and just talking to me are the things that make fanfic writers happy and encouraged and nourished. So have at you!


	12. Le Plaisir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Steve plucked a grape from the fruit sculpture, smiling, and picked up the card. He wondered what had prompted Bucky to buy him an ‘Edible Arrangement’, as the envelope called it, as he sat down on the sofa and tore open the envelope to read the card._
> 
> _**Sorry I stabbed you and shot you and nearly beat you to death that one time. Also, sorry for those other times I tried to kill you** _
> 
> _Steve suddenly wanted Bucky to come home very badly._

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**same day**

“Bucky?”

Steve walked in the door, leaning down to prop his shield against the wall as he always did. It had become second nature to him by now, and he was hardly aware of doing it half the time. 

The meeting with Rhodey and Maria had gone well, and plenty had been accomplished, but it had run long. Most of the meetings he’d been required to attend had ended up going on for a lot longer than seemed necessary, and he was beginning to wonder if he had the authority to set time limits for meetings in the future. He was the Director, after all, and if he couldn’t pull rank in order to keep meetings from dragging on for hours, what was the position good for?

“Buck, where are you?” He came into the living room, expecting to find Bucky sprawled out on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table and one of his science fiction serials playing on Netflix, but instead, there was a decorative fruit sculpture in the middle of the coffee table. A small card sat next to it, a yellow Post-It with a handwritten message scrawled on it stuck to the flowerpot.

_Eat your fruit,_ read the Post-It in Bucky’s slightly clumsy handwriting. _Back soon._

Steve plucked a grape from the fruit sculpture, smiling, and picked up the card. He wondered what had prompted Bucky to buy him an ‘Edible Arrangement’, as the envelope called it, as he sat down on the sofa and tore open the envelope to read the card.

_Sorry I stabbed you and shot you and nearly beat you to death that one time. Also, sorry for those other times I tried to kill you._

Steve suddenly wanted Bucky to come home very badly.

He set the card down gently next to the flowerpot of fruit and picked a chocolate-covered something from it to chew on, which turned out to be a piece of apple. And as he sat there on the sofa with his fruit bouquet and his thoughts, he began to wonder what had prompted Bucky to feel that he needed to apologize at all, much less with a gift like this. Hadn’t he been clear enough to Bucky that he didn’t need an apology? That Bucky shouldn’t be apologizing for things that weren’t his fault, and that he didn’t hold what had happened on the helicarrier and on the bridge against him?

Apparently he needed to make it clearer. 

Still, he thought with a slight smile as he bit off a piece of melon, at least it showed some creativity on Bucky’s part. A fruit arrangement was a pretty original apology gift, after all. He wondered where Bucky had gotten the idea.

And for that matter, where was Bucky right now?

Seized by a sudden need to ask questions, he found himself reaching for the phone to call Natasha. 

“Did you get an, uh...” He had to check the name on the card again. “Edible Arrangement too?”

Natasha hummed an affirmative into the phone, then added, “And I’ve eaten some of the Swizzles, too.”

“The heck’s a Swizzle?” He immediately thought better of the question. “Never mind. He sent me a card, too.” He held it up again and read it aloud. “I wish he was home now, so I could give him a hug and remind him he doesn’t need to apologize to me.”

“That’s very sweet, Rogers.” Her tone was gentle. “I’m sure he’d like that.”

“I think he needs it,” Steve replied with a small smile. “Not that the fruit bouquet isn’t nice, but I’d rather have him remember that nobody faults him for the things he did when he wasn’t himself. I know you don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” she murmured. After a moment, and slightly louder, she added, “The Swizzles are good though. You should eat them.”

“I might already have.” He popped an orange slice into his mouth and tried to sound like he wasn’t speaking around it. “I think I’ve eaten one of everything.” 

The Swizzles were probably the chocolate-covered apples, now that he thought of it, but he supposed it didn’t matter. 

“Hey, listen, have you got any idea where he is?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I might have some idea.”

Steve cocked an eyebrow. “Well, are you going to tell me, or do I have to hire Dick Tracy?” He knew he was dating himself with the reference, but Chester Gould’s comic-strip creation had always been his favorite. “He left me a note saying he’d be back soon and that I should eat the fruit, but he didn’t say where he was going or when he left.”

“You might have to hire Dick Tracy. Warren Beatty version.” She was clearly enjoying herself way too much. “I’d help you myself, Rogers, but I’m kind of indisposed at the moment.”

“Who’s Warren Beatty?” Steve sighed again. Why did he keep on asking questions that didn’t matter? “Never mind.” He smiled at the tone in Natasha’s voice. “What’s got you so occupied, then?”

“You don’t know who Warren Beatty is?” She snorted. “No, of course you don’t. Remind me to make you watch _Dick Tracy_ sometime. Not the serials, which I’m sure exist, but the actual movie.”

“I’ve seen the serials.” He was failing at avoiding the tangents she threw at him, he realized. “So you don’t have any idea where Bucky is?”

“Keep up, Rogers.” Definitely enjoying herself way too much. “I did say I might have some idea, remember?”

“You’ve also been trying to sidetrack me ever since.” He gave an exaggerated sigh, more to keep from chuckling than anything else. “So when you decide to get back to the point, I’ll be here.”

“He’s sleeping.” A beat, then, “On my lap.”

“Is he?” Steve smiled. If there was one thing Bucky could be counted on to do, it was fall asleep in a comfortable place. Though he preferred to think that Bucky got his best sleep next to him. “Are you planning on letting me have him back?”

A long moment of silence hung between them.

Finally she said, “I don’t know. Depends on what you want with him.”

Steve stopped just short of a lighthearted reply. Something in the long silence cautioned him against a surface answer to what Natasha had said. A sudden thought occurred to him: Natasha and Bucky had been in love a long time ago and it was entirely possible that she was starting to love him again. Would she be able to keep from being jealous of the time Bucky and Steve spent together?

For that matter, would he?

“Why don’t I come by,” he offered. “That way you don’t have to wake him up yet, and we can keep talking.”

“Didn’t he take your bike?” She was probably smiling now. “Or didn’t you notice?”

“My…” He looked around the room, for what reason he didn’t know. It wasn’t as though he would have been able to see the bike from his window, after all. “Did he…?” His eyebrows knit, and he realized he must be sounding very stupid. “No, I didn’t notice.” He let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “So I guess that’s one thing I want with him. He’s got my wheels.”

“You’re such a dork, Rogers,” Natasha said, but her tone was very warm. “Find yourself an Uber and come over. You can handle that much, right?”

“I guess I’ll have to,” he groused, but couldn’t keep from smiling as he got up from the couch. He paused on his way to the door, though, before hanging up the phone. “Hey, do I have to refrigerate this fruit thing?”

Thirty minutes later and a few dollars lighter, he was walking into Natasha’s living room. Bucky sat on the couch, awake, and Natasha walked over to resume her place beside him.

“Hey Buck,” he said as he propped the shield by the door. He’d gotten into the habit of carrying it around with him wherever he went ever since the events leading up to the takedown of Project Insight. It seemed a great deal smarter to be prepared now than it ever had before. “Thanks for the Edible Arrangement.”

Bucky chewed on a mouthful of orange slice. “Did you eat it all?”

“Not yet.” He sat down on the couch on the other side of Bucky, smiling over at Natasha. “I had a few bites and then I put the rest in the fridge.” 

Bucky frowned. “The note said to eat your fruit.”

Steve laughed. “Okay, Ma. As soon as we get back home, you can help me eat it.”

“He’s already helping me eat mine, Rogers.” Natasha gave him that fractional smile of hers. “Besides, you should be able to polish the whole thing off on your own without even noticing it.”

“And besides, I still have some of the plums left. And the walnuts.” Off Natasha’s raised eyebrow, Bucky added, “It’s brain food.”

“Which reminds me, we’re going to need more plums.” Steve furrowed his brow for a second. “Unless any of the fruits in the arrangement count as brain food too. I should look it up.”

“And while you’re at it,” Natasha leaned against the armrest of the couch, “you could explain this whole ‘brain food’ thing.”

“Didn’t I?” Steve looked over at Natasha in slight confusion. He’d been doing that a lot recently, hadn’t he? “Oh. Well, I was looking around for things that might help Bucky with his memory, and I ran across some foods that they’ve done studies on. Real scientific studies, and it turns out that they help boost brain function, especially memory.”

Bucky plucked a honeydew wedge off the fruit bouquet. “We don’t know if it actually works or not. Plums are good though.”

“It’s not like you’re supposed to see improvement the second you eat it.” Steve reached out for a grape, catching himself halfway through the motion and looking over at Natasha for permission. She nodded, that tiny smile still in place, and he popped the grape into his mouth. “That stuff takes months. Maybe even years.”

Natasha crossed her legs and leaned into the armrest. “And they probably did the field test with senior citizens and crossword puzzles.” She smirked at Steve. “Which means you should probably be eating walnuts too, Rogers.”

“I wouldn’t go making jokes about anybody’s age if I were you, Romanoff.” Steve gave her a scowl that didn’t even go halfway to hiding the smile he was trying to suppress. “You’re old enough for an AARP membership too, you know.”

Bucky spoke around a mouthful of honeydew. “What’s an AARP membership?”

Steve was about to answer when Natasha spoke. “Something Rogers uses to save money on his prune juice and Centrum Silver.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t actually have one. The AARP’s basically a club for people over fifty, and they get benefits.”

“Discounts on dinner before five in the afternoon.” Natasha looked like she was thoroughly enjoying herself. “Free tube of Fixodent with every tenth purchase.”

“What do you do for entertainment when I’m not around?” Steve glowered at Natasha, barely able to hold back a chuckle.

“You mean like the IHOP senior discount?” Bucky removed a skewer of cantaloupe balls from the bouquet. “Or Senior Saturdays at Turvino’s?”

“Kind of,” Steve replied, happy to get away from what he knew would be a losing battle of banter between himself and Natasha. “Except that it works everywhere.”

Bucky said nothing to that, but he looked thoughtful as he ate his way through the cantaloupe.

The Edible Arrangement didn’t last long with all three of them picking at it, and it wasn’t long before Steve realized he was hungry. Bucky, of course - being Bucky - was always hungry, and Natasha got them a Thai food menu from the kitchen. And about forty-five minutes later, the three of them were side by side on the sofa again, this time with a huge spread laid out on the coffee table and a black-and-white French movie on the TV.

“These things are the best unintentional comedies ever created,” Natasha said as she stirred her basil chicken. “They take themselves so seriously, and it turns out to be hilarious. Probably more so if you can’t speak French.”

“I don’t know if ‘hilarious’ is the word I’d use to describe it.” Steve raised an eyebrow at the screen and took a bite of his larb. “And my French is pretty much nonexistent. All I know how to do is swear and challenge people to fights.”

Bucky snorted. “You’re not missing much. Ambroise lost his looks two years ago, but he used to attract the ladies at the fancy hair salon.” He shoveled a forkful of pad see ew into his mouth. “And he’s debating which mask to wear to the ball tonight.”

Natasha snorted, bringing her hand quickly up to her mouth. “Comedy gold,” she said once she’d finished chewing and swallowing the food she’d nearly inhaled.

“And now they’re going to close the town whorehouse so the madam can go to her niece’s first communion,” Bucky said after a while. “But one patron is upset about that, because it means he can’t visit Rosa that day.”

“Are we watching the same movie, even?” Steve looked incredulously back and forth between the screen and Bucky. “That’s not what I would have thought this was about at all.”

“You know what?” Natasha sounded happier than Steve had heard her sound in a long time, and it made him glad to be there for it. “I take it back. At least in this one case. Knowing French makes it funnier.”

Bucky chewed on a chicken satay skewer. “The madam’s brother is pretty relieved that the whorehouse will be doing business as usual on Sunday.” He glanced at Steve. “So he can see Rosa again.”

“Is that one Rosa?” Steve gestured towards the screen with his chopsticks.

“That one’s the madam, Steve,” Natasha said with exaggerated patience. “Rosa’s not there.”

“Rosa’s a delicate flower,” Bucky said, his expression unwavering.

Natasha snorted again. “At least according to the madam’s brother.”

“But he’s very provincial.” Bucky nodded. “And doesn’t understand her cosmopolitan ways.”

“He just wants to find love the good old-fashioned way.” Natasha nodded and leaned against Bucky’s shoulder. “By buying it.”

“I can’t follow this movie at all.” Steve sat back and shook his head. “It feels like we’re watching a completely different one now. Where’s the hair salon guy in the mask?”

Bucky frowned. “He’s gone, Steve. That was a different story, and we’re just starting a new one now.” 

“So I was right.” Steve nodded, then turned back to Bucky. “Wait, what? This is a different movie now? I don’t even know how the first one ended.”

“Looks like you need to eat more walnuts and plums, Rogers.” He didn’t even have to look at Natasha to know she was smirking; it was clear enough in her voice.

Bucky scowled. “It’s different vignettes in the same movie.” He gestured to the TV, where a placard reading ‘Le Modele’ had appeared. “Here, this one should be about an artist. You’ll like it.”

“As long as he’s not a mime,” Steve groused as he worked on his larb. “It doesn’t say he’s a mime, does it?”

“No, Steve.” Bucky didn’t even look at him. “It doesn’t say he’s a mime.”

“But it doesn’t say he’s not?” 

Steve looked back over at Bucky, unable to keep the smile off his face. Sitting here on the sofa next to Bucky, with Natasha at the end, a good meal halfway done and an incomprehensible movie playing out in front of them, made him feel happy in a way he didn’t have words for. For the briefest instant, it felt like they were back in the old movie house on a Saturday afternoon: flickering entertainment in front of them, snacks arrayed around them, side by side all day until it was finally time to head home.

He leaned against Bucky’s shoulder. Natasha was still doing the same on Bucky’s other side. And for the first time in a long time, he felt content.

Happy.

The night gradually wore down. And once the food was eaten, the garbage cleared away, and the living room tidied up, Steve was ready to take Bucky home.

“Thanks for a great evening, Nat,” he said as he picked up his shield from where he’d left it by the door. “We need to do this more often.”

She smiled in response, moving in to hug Bucky good night, and suddenly leaned towards Steve to kiss him gently on the cheek - a kiss that lingered for a few seconds before she moved away.

“Good night, boys.” Natasha smiled the sort of warm smile that was rare to see from her, and Steve couldn’t help but smile back. Neither could Bucky, as Steve noticed, though he did murmur something in Russian that Steve assumed was some variation on ‘good night.’

“So, Buck.” Steve put an arm around Bucky’s shoulders as they walked out to the garage. “Should I drive home, or do you want to?”

“I’m driving.” Bucky tapped his fingers against the shield. “Even if that thing’s a giant target.”

Steve chuckled. “Even if it is, it’s a target we’ll be safe behind. If there’s anything that can get through this shield, I’ve never heard of it.”

A moment later, they peeled out of the parking garage - with Bucky driving and the shield clipped to the front of the bike - and went several blocks without speaking. But when they were stopped at a light in Tribeca, Bucky murmured:

“We should have ordered more of that custard sticky rice to take home with us. What was it called - _khao neow sang kaya_?” He shook his head. “I don’t speak Thai.”

“Me neither.” Steve shrugged.. “The closest I ever get is when I mispronounce the names of the food I order.” He chuckled. “And whatever you just said, you must have pronounced it right. Because I have no idea how to spell it.”

“It’s tonal, and I only speak a few tonal languages,” Bucky said. “No practice with Thai.”

Before Steve could reply to that, the light changed, Bucky revved the bike back up, and they were off. Though he did wonder, as they sped along through the dark streets, how many other odd skills Bucky had picked up during his time as the Winter Soldier. He spoke at least a dozen languages; Steve knew that. And he’d seen Bucky’s combat skills as well, but he had the feeling he’d be surprised by what else Bucky knew.

They crossed the bridge without speaking, and Steve marveled at it as he always did. Amongst all the metal bridges with their sleek architecture, the elegance of the Brooklyn Bridge’s stonework never failed to catch his artist’s eye. There was something in its design that would never go out of style.

“Hey, you know something, Buck?” Steve leaned forward to speak into Bucky’s ear. “We should get you a bike of your own. Then you could go wherever you liked. What do you think?”

“I think we could race to waffle houses,” Bucky shouted into the wind. “Instead of jogging to them.”

“Every once in a while, maybe.” Steve laughed. “But if we keep eating breakfast at those places and never go jogging, pretty soon we won’t fit into our field gear.”

That likely wouldn’t happen. Ever since the serum, Steve had never been able to go more than a day or so without some kind of physical exercise. It was almost as if the serum had built something into his brain to remind him that his enhanced physicality needed to be maintained. He could only assume that Bucky was the same way. And he supposed Natasha was as well - something or other must have been done to her to keep her looking like someone in her early thirties when she had to have been at least seventy.

She was someone else who’d been victimized by the Soviets, he thought bitterly. And by SHIELD as well, though in a different way. The conversation he’d had with her in the truck he’d hotwired to get to Camp Lehigh would never leave his memory. It had revealed to him just how badly damaged she’d been at that point, and how badly she’d needed real friends.

_“It’s kind of hard to trust someone when you don’t know who that someone really is,”_ he’d said, and her reply had haunted him for days afterward.

_“Who do you want me to be?”_ she’d asked with shocking sincerity, and he wished he’d answered her differently. Wished he’d been able to get right to the heart of the problem by suggesting not that she be ‘a friend’, but that she be herself. That she stop pretending, stop making things up instead of telling the truth, stop putting on a different mask for every person she interacted with, and just be the person underneath.

He wondered how much of herself she really knew how to be.

The bike jerked to a halt, and he realized they were in the parking garage outside the apartment. He’d been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t noticed. And he stayed wrapped up in his own thoughts as he and Bucky went upstairs, took showers, and got ready for bed.

Having Bucky there with him, living with him, had changed everything for the better. And knowing how much Bucky wanted to be there with him made Steve happy in a way he couldn’t even describe. Even after Bucky recovered, Steve never wanted him to move out. He wanted the two of them to keep sharing the house, following their routine, even sharing the bed. He found he was getting better sleep that way as well, and he smiled to think about it.

“Hey Buck?” He called out in the direction of the bathroom as he pulled on his pajamas. “You coming to bed?”

Bucky came out of the bathroom a moment later, clad in sweatpants and a t-shirt, his hair damp from the shower. “Should we eat your Edible Arrangement?”

“After Natasha’s Edible Arrangement and all the Thai food on top of it?” Steve chuckled as he got into bed. “One thing that’s never changed about you, Buck, and that’s your appetite.”

Bucky shrugged. “I could eat.” He switched the light off and climbed into bed anyway, pulling the blanket up over the both of them.

“You could always eat.” Steve shifted around under the covers, closer to Bucky. “No matter how much you’ve already eaten.”

“The Swizzles were good,” Bucky said. “I could eat more of them.”

“I think I left some on my Arrangement,” Steve said as he curled up against Bucky and draped an arm over him. “If you want them, be my guest.”

In response, Bucky merely wound himself more closely around Steve until damp tendrils of hair brushed against the side of Steve’s face. And Steve tightened his arm around Bucky’s middle until he was hugging him close.

“Have you been sleeping all right lately, Buck?” He shifted his head slightly, to keep Bucky’s hair from getting in his mouth. “I mean, here in bed with me?”

“Why?” As Steve’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see Bucky looking at him with narrowed eyes. “Is it too crowded? I can leave. If you want.” A beat, then, “If you want, I can leave.”

“What? No.” Horrified, Steve reflexively hugged Bucky more tightly. The thought of Bucky deciding to distance himself from Steve again was nothing Steve wanted to deal with. “No, Buck, I don’t want you to go. You just haven’t mentioned nightmares lately, and I was wondering.” 

“I mean, back to my room.” Bucky clenched at the fabric of Steve’s t-shirt. “I can go back there. If it’s too crowded here.”

“I know what you meant, Buck.” Steve didn’t let up on the hug. “It’s not too crowded here, and I don’t want you to leave.” He moved slightly closer. “I like it when you’re here.”

“The nightmares haven’t been as bad lately.” Bucky’s breath was warm against Steve’s neck, and he shivered slightly at the sensation before edging closer to Bucky under the covers. “When I’m here...”

Steve smiled at that, a warm sensation blossoming in his chest. “It’s good to hear you say that, Buck.” He closed his eyes. “And I hope you don’t want to leave, because I promise you that I don’t want you to.”

“I don’t want to leave.” The words were barely a whisper. “The only reason I’m following all your stupid fucking rules…” He shook his head, damp locks of hair tickling Steve’s nose. “I don’t want to leave.”

“No one’s going to make you leave, Bucky.” Steve hugged him tighter, his hand coming to rest on Bucky’s metal shoulder. He could feel the different texture even through Bucky’s T-shirt. And oddly enough, he was beginning not to care about the difference anymore. All that mattered was that Bucky didn’t want to leave. That he wanted to stay; that he was following the rules Steve knew he didn’t agree with just so he could stay. “This is your home.”

Bucky simply murmured, “I know,” and fell silent. 

Steve lapsed into silence as well, and he realized all over again both how far Bucky had come in such a short time and how far he still had left to go. After all, it had only been a few months since Bucky had scarcely even remembered his own name, and now he was living back in Brooklyn and sending fruit bouquets as apologies for the things he’d unwittingly been a part of. And yet, he still couldn’t force himself to say Lukin’s name or think badly of Karpov, and the memories of his happy childhood were still buried somewhere under layers of mental scar tissue.

Yes, there was a long road ahead. But it was a road they were going to go down together.

“Hey Buck.” Steve pulled back slightly to look Bucky in the eyes. “You know you didn’t have to apologize to me about what happened on the helicarrier, right?”

Bucky shrugged against him. “Apologies make people feel good. And so does fruit.”

“I know.” Steve leaned his head forward until his forehead came to rest against Bucky’s. “And it’s not that I don’t appreciate the apology.” He smiled. “Or the fruit. But you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. I certainly don’t.”

For a long moment, Bucky said nothing. “I know you don’t.” His breath was soft against Steve’s neck. “But… that doesn’t… it doesn’t change…” He snorted in frustration. “I still did it. I still did those things.”

Steve sighed, feeling a little frustrated himself. They’d gone over this so many times, in almost exactly the same words, and nothing had changed. How many more times would they have to go through it before he got through to Bucky?

“But you saved me, too.”

Maybe it wasn’t going to be a simple matter of rehashing the same tired discussion over and over. Maybe if one way of phrasing it wasn’t working, a different way would. Or at least it was worth a try.

“And I think pulling me out of the river meant a hell of a lot more to you than trying to kill me.” Steve raised an eyebrow. “Am I right?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky breathed. “I… I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to hurt you. And I…” His fingers clenched into the fabric of Steve’s shirt. “I wanted to give you something. To show that.”

“I know.” Steve nudged his head forward gently against Bucky’s, wishing he could do more. Wishing he could reach into Bucky’s head the way Jean Grey could and take all the pain and doubt and damage away. “And I’m glad you did. I’m glad you feel that way, Buck. It means you’re doing a lot better.”

Bucky nuzzled against Steve’s neck. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Steve closed his eyes and smiled, Bucky’s breath warm against his neck. “Good night, Bucky.”

It was a good way to end a good day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> The movie they're watching is the 1952 Academy Award winning, French anthology comedy _Le Plaisir_ (House of Pleasure), based on three stories by Guy de Maupassant.
> 
> What, you thought I made up the whole ridiculous thing? _Non, non._ It's as Natasha says - "comedy gold."
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> I received a flurry of really nice comments on the last chapter, and it makes me so, so happy to know that people are reading and enjoying and **reacting** to this story. You know the old adage is that you should write primarily for yourself, and I do have a lot of fun writing this story, but it wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable if it weren't for the **interactions** I get to have with the people who are reading and enjoying this story along with me. So thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. They never fail to make my day.
> 
> As always, leaving comments is life giving. Kudos are great too. So please feed the author


	13. Mission Reports

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Without a word, he slid off the bench and onto his knees in front of her. Both arms went around her waist and he gazed up at her with eyes that were painfully blue. She waited, actually holding her breath, for what would come next._
> 
> _Another second dragged by._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If they're ["speaking like this,"] they're speaking Russian.

**Rotterdam, Netherlands**   
**late June 2015**

“I should have picked up a box of those fried cheese waffles,” Bucky murmured into the secure comm. “Or the cheese flavored onion rings.”

Natasha’s voice whispered in his ear. “Don’t you ever think of anything but food?” 

They were speaking in English for the benefit of anyone who could be listening in: Steve, Agent Hill, Agent Coulson. Agent Coulson had specifically requested they do so, after a few missions where no one could understand them, and so while it felt weird doing it, there they were. 

Agent Coulson had even said it didn’t “feel quite right, having to ask _Bucky Barnes_ not to speak Russian,” but Bucky didn’t know what to do with that comment and so just fell back on following the specific order. 

Bucky could hear the amusement in Natasha’s voice, and he scowled in return. “Midnight snack.”

In the past several weeks, HYDRA had redoubled its efforts to root out and silence any of its members who’d been on SHIELD’s radar. It was unclear whether the General was still the one in charge of those efforts, but either way, they had been far too successful, and so many of HYDRA’s agents had fled the US before either HYDRA or SHIELD could get to them.

“Tell you what.” The smile in Natasha’s voice seemed to only get bigger. “If we finish this thing quickly, I’ll buy you as many boxes of cheese snacks as you want.”

“They also have chocolate breakfast sprinkles.” Bucky shifted slightly on the darkened catwalk. “Those looked pretty good.”

They were holed up in a filthy warehouse in the port of Rotterdam at three in the morning. Intelligence had suggested that the target - an international businessman by the name of Jan van der Stoep - was planning on once again skipping the country, this time to Belize via Rotterdam.

“Breakfast _sprinkles_?” The smirk in Natasha’s voice was replaced by a frown. “Should I even ask?”

“ _Hagelslag._ ” The Dutch word felt slightly awkward rolling off his tongue; his command of German was excellent, but his Dutch was merely passable. “You put it on bread.”

“Okay.” Natasha sounded unconvinced. “You’re going to have to show me that one.”

“When this is fin-” Bucky started to say, but a door at the far end of the warehouse eased open, letting in the smallest crack of light from the outside.

A group of men that were obviously a security team in unconvincing plainclothes crept into the warehouse. Through the scope of his M4 Carbine, Bucky could make out the anxious face of van der Stoep.

“Visual identification on target confirmed,” he breathed into the comm.

“Alive, James, remember.” Natasha was somehow gentle in her admonition. “We need him alive.”

He shifted the M4 slightly to the right, the crosshairs now resting on the heart of the man closest to van der Stoep. The sequence of shots unfolded in his mind: first the shot he’d already lined up, which would draw the attention of the guard next to the one who would fall. When he instinctively turned to watch his comrade fall, he’d present the back of his head nicely for the second shot. And the ensuing chaos would give him his pick of shots for the third kill.

Natasha would handle the rest. She’d be able to tell which shots he’d picked and target the rest herself.

She always did amaze him that way.

He began applying pressure to the trigger, slowly increasing the pull until the M4 bucked against his shoulder. His finger was already tightening on the trigger for the second shot as he shifted the weapon over to the next guard’s head, which burst into a cloud of red jelly just at the moment when the man had fully turned his back. Natasha’s shots crackled in a one-two-three-four staccato, and men dropped limply to the ground with holes in their chests or heads or faces. And the last guard had time only to raise his pistol before the M4 dropped him.

Van der Stoep moved to either run or pull out a weapon, and Natasha dropped down from the catwalk to stand next to him.

“You don’t want to do that,” she said, hands on her hips. “The same sniper who capped your security team has you in his crosshairs right now. But if you come in quietly -”

“Go to hell, bitch.” Van der Stoep’s voice was as full of venom as his face, and then he crunched something between his teeth and promptly gagged as his mouth overflowed with white spittle. He collapsed to the floor, his whole body twitching, but still managed to mutter “Hail HYDRA,” before he died.

Bucky lowered his weapon. “Fuck.”

\---

“Poison again.” Steve sighed irritably. “Their game plan hasn’t changed much since the war.”

Bucky crunched on a fried cheese waffle. “Guess not.”

True to her word, Natasha had picked up several boxes of Dutch snacks while they were waiting for extraction. Turned out they weren’t a bad snack at a four in the morning debriefing.

“Guess not,” Steve echoed, then raised an eyebrow at Bucky. “What are you eating?”

“ _Kaas wafels_ ,” Bucky said, and then smirked at Steve’s sour look. “Fried cheese waffles.” He shook the box and held it out. “Want one?”

Steve looked perplexed - as well as slightly queasy - and waved the box away. “You enjoy ‘em, Buck.”

Natasha likewise declined the offer, folding her arms and leaning against the nearby bulkhead of the Helicarrier’s bridge. “The poison surprised me. There were one or two agents we found who used it a few months back, but I didn’t think it had gotten so widespread again.”

Bucky ate another fried cheese waffle. He couldn’t say if it had gotten so widespread again or not. No one in HYDRA had ever told him anything; he had always been expected to obey orders without question and carry out his missions to perfection. Nothing more, nothing less.

He frowned and popped another cheese waffle into his mouth.

\---

**Alpe des Chaux, Switzerland**

“They do like to hear themselves talk, don’t they?”

Natasha turned her head to look at James. The two of them were in the stone cellar beneath the wooden floor of the chalet they’d traced their current target to. Natasha had squatted down on the floor some time ago, but James was on his feet with both hands on his weapon. And he looked tense - tense and ready to go at any moment.

They’d tailed Jean-Bertrand Allemande to the chalet in the hope of capturing him, but they’d run into a massive stroke of good fortune when he’d been joined by three other HYDRA functionaries. The group of them were up there now, talking quickly in hushed tones. Fortunately, being right underneath, Natasha was able to hear everything fairly well. Maybe they’d get even luckier and one of them would give away the locations of other operatives.

“We can still get away,” one of them was saying. “Where SHIELD can’t find us, and where we can still do HYDRA’s work.”

“How?” Allemande sounded close to panic. “SHIELD has eyes and ears everywhere.”

Natasha smiled a self-satisfied smile and turned to wink at James.

“So does HYDRA,” another, deeper voice cut in. “And if we can get away, back to one of our bases -”

“Then what? We’ll be safe, like touching ‘base’ in some stupid child’s game?” Allemande’s voice shook with nerves. “SHIELD won’t stop looking for us. And once they know where we are, they’ll come after us. _He’ll_ come after us.”

“Captain America?” The first man snorted derisively. “What will he care when we’re half a world away from his country?”

“Not him,” Allemande said fearfully. “General Lukin.”

James’ eyes went wide, and for a second, Natasha was afraid that he would burst upstairs and grab Allemande by the throat. That he would throttle him and try to pry Lukin’s whereabouts out of him, like he’d done with that man Bezborodov in Nebraska. And that, just like before, his conditioning would prevent him from even mentioning Lukin’s name, and he would wind up killing them all in a fit of frustrated rage.

She reached up and put a hand on his arm, gently but firmly, and looked into his eyes. Silently, she shook her head. 

James gritted his teeth and clenched his hands around his M4 rifle in visible frustration.

“Lukin won’t come after us if we show him we can still be of use to him,” said the deep voice with a hint of unease. “We’re still loyal to HYDRA, after all.”

“And Lukin’s too smart to turn on us if he knows we’re working with him,” said the first voice.

“You don’t know him,” quavered Allemande. “You don’t know what he’s like. He’s already sent his private militia after other operatives who managed to get away from SHIELD. And he’s on to the group that managed to make it to Salzburg as well.”

Natasha’s ears pricked up at that. A group of HYDRA operatives in Austria? Rogers would want to hear about that.

_Now_ , James mouthed at her, and he was practically trembling with rage or frustration or some terrible mixture of both. 

_Wait_ , she mouthed back at him, her hand resting more heavily on his arm. If they gave up more information without needing to be interrogated -

“He doesn’t control the Winter Soldier anymore.” The first voice carried a note of assurance and - was it derision? “He needs us more than he knows.”

“That’s just the trouble, isn’t it?” the deep voice responded. “He doesn’t know he needs us, and so he may not wait to come after us.”

“I’m not staying here long.” There was the scraping of a chair and a creaking of the floorboards as Allemande got to his feet. “I’m going to drop off the grid for a few years, and I would suggest you do the same.”

James shrugged off Natasha’s hand, and she could see there would be no keeping him back. Nor would there be any sense in trying to do so, not now that everyone upstairs was preparing to run out of the chalet and head off to God knew where. No, it was time to take them in now. And it had to be done fast.

She locked eyes with him for a second, then laced her fingers and held them out for him to use as a stirrup. He nodded, slung his weapon over his shoulder, and took two steps back before charging forward and stepping into her cupped hands. She flung him upward with all her strength - which wasn’t easy, considering his weight - and he hit the ceiling of the cellar with tremendous force.

The floor exploded outwards in a shower of splintered wood at the massive blow from his metal arm, and he’d unslung his weapon and drawn a bead on Allemande before Natasha had managed to propel herself upwards through the gaping hole with a leap. He grabbed a handful of Allemande’s shirt front with his metal hand, slammed him forcefully against the wall, and held him there while bringing his weapon up one-handed and holding the end of the barrel against his cheek.

Natasha acted fast. While Allemande’s companions were stunned by the shrapnel from the floor, she flicked a stinger disc at the closest one, sending him to the floor in a twitching, unconscious heap. A knockout dart from her Widow’s Bite hit the second one in the forearm as he instinctively threw up his hands to protect himself, and he collapsed like a stringless marionette. She fired another dart at the third, who was in the midst of reaching into his jacket for what must have been a gun. The dart punctured his jacket right over the spot his hand had been reaching for, pinning the jacket to the back of his hand and drawing a high-pitched shriek that turned into a groan as the drug did its work.

[“Alive, James, remember.”] She came towards them slowly, James still holding Allemande against the wall by his collar at gunpoint. [“We need him to talk.”]

[“I’m not going to kill him,”] James growled, but his whole body was shaking with barely controlled fury. [“But he knows. He knows where… where he is.”]

[“Good.”] Natasha looked into Allemande’s wide eyes for a moment, then into James’ cold ones. [“Then he’ll tell us.”] She switched back to English for Allemande’s benefit. “He’ll tell us everything he knows. Won’t you, Mr. Allemande?”

“I know he’s looking for you.” Allemande spoke not to Natasha, but to James. “Winter Soldier.”

James growled something incomprehensible and slammed Allemande’s head against the wall. “Talk.”

Instead, Allemande met Natasha’s gaze and held it for a moment, a moment during which the look in those eyes changed. He was weighing his options, she realized as she watched it unfold as if in slow motion. She knew what was about to happen even before she saw his eyes go dead. Before she caught the telltale movement of his tongue inside his mouth.

She lunged forward, lashing out with her arm. But even as she lunged, she knew she wasn’t going to make it in time. Before she even had time to extend her arm, she saw his jaw clench. And when she strained against his chin with all her might and forced his mouth open, a torrent of foam poured out. 

James’ eyes widened. “No!” Allemande sagged limply in his grasp a second later, and James recoiled and dropped his lifeless body to the floor. “No, goddammit, no!”

Natasha only just barely managed to bite down on her own cry of frustration.

\---

“We need to do something about that poison,” Natasha said grimly. 

James hadn’t said a word for the entire flight back to the Helicarrier, and rather than accompany her to the bridge to report to Rogers, he’d stalked off to the armory. At least that was where he’d said he’d been going; Natasha wondered if he might have headed off somewhere more private to keep his angry frustration to himself. The look on his face, the brokenness of his voice when Allemande had killed himself had been heartrending. 

She couldn’t let that happen to him again.

She held Rogers’ gaze with resolute eyes. “Not having a way of stopping them from killing themselves is costing us too much valuable information. The science team has to make this their top priority.”

“Agreed,” Rogers said without hesitation. The look in his eyes was one of determination as well; she knew how much it galled him to lose the chance of bringing any of HYDRA’s operatives to justice. He’d been vocal enough, and bitter enough, about men like Karpov and Pushkin dying before they could be punished. “I’ll make the announcement myself.” His face softened, his eyes filling with concern. “Where’s Bucky?”

She was reminded in that moment that Rogers cared for James as much as she did. For different reasons, certainly, but he loved him.

She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“The armory.” She took a step back. “And I ought to be getting there myself.”

She didn’t find him in the armory, of course. Or in the gym, or in the storeroom, or any of the dozen other places she went looking for him before finding him in one of the lower-level locker rooms. He sat there on the bench in the middle of the room, his weapons unreturned, his field gear still on, his arms hanging limply at his sides, staring numbly at the wall. 

“James?” She came up next to him and sat on the bench beside him, her hand coming to rest gently on his metal forearm. [“Talk to me.”]

He didn’t startle at her touch, so at least there was that. But his only response was to just barely shake his head.

What could she say to him that wouldn’t be simple placation or an outright lie? She couldn’t tell him that it didn’t matter that Allemande had killed himself; nothing could be farther from the truth. He’d taken an untold amount of valuable information with him to the grave, including what James had wanted most: a map to Lukin. She couldn’t tell him that there would be other chances, other opportunities for them to find Lukin’s whereabouts, because she had nothing to back that claim up. She couldn’t even tell him that the suicides of so many HYDRA operatives lately meant that they were growing desperate, because according to Rogers, suicide had been SOP for every captured HYDRA operative in the 1940s.

[“I just got back from talking to Rogers.”] She kept her hand on his arm. [“I got him to agree to making it the science division’s top priority to find an antidote to the poison.”]

James just barely snorted at that.

[“We can’t fold at every setback.”] She shook her head. [“They’ll be counting on that.”]

[“They?”] he finally said. [“Who’s they?”]

[“HYDRA,”] she said. [“Lukin. If we get so frustrated we start making mistakes, we’ll only be hurting ourselves.”]

[“Oh yeah?”] He scrubbed a hand over his face and made a sound of bone-weary exhaustion. [“Steve send you to say that?”]

She snorted. It wouldn’t have been much of a stretch to imagine Rogers saying something like that. She supposed he was rubbing off on her.

[“No,”] she replied all the same. [“But it’s true. Our success depends on them losing their composure and making mistakes. When it’s the other way around, we’ll lose every time.”]

[“Yeah.”] He licked his lips, stared at the ceiling. Abruptly began pulling off his fingerless tactical gloves. [“Yeah, okay.”]

“James.” She pressed down with her hand more intently on his forearm and shifted closer to him on the bench, and found herself reaching up to stroke his hair despite herself. [“I wanted to bring him in too.”]

A moment ago, he had looked as if he were about to jump off the bench. Now he sagged and leaned slightly into her touch. 

[“I know you did,”] he murmured. [“But we still didn’t manage to do it.”]

[“But that doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t get to Lukin a different way.”] She continued stroking his hair, feeling oddly pleased with herself for being able to calm him down so easily, with such a simple gesture. [“Especially once we have a way to counter the poison and bring more of them in alive for questioning.”]

He closed his eyes. After a long moment, he managed, [“Yeah.”]

[“Yeah,”] she replied with a small smile, running her fingers through his hair again. For as much as it comforted him, it was comforting to her as well. [“And besides, we did manage to bring the rest of them in alive.”] 

After Allemande’s suicide, Natasha had stuffed the others’ mouths with rags torn from the dead man’s shirt and held securely in place with heavy plastic zip ties. They hadn’t been able to tongue the poison capsules out of their hollow teeth, much less bite down on them, and although one of the men had lunged for the bay door when the Quinjet had been in flight (probably hoping to hurl himself out to his death) all three of them had been brought in alive. They’d been turned over to the medical staff upon arriving at the Helicarrier and sedated so that the poison capsules could be removed, and Natasha was looking forward to interrogating them.

She frowned. [“Even if we did have to do it a bit crudely.”] 

A small smile drifted across his face. [“Yeah.”] He didn’t open his eyes, but he did shift ever-so-closer to her. [“They deserved it. All of it.”]

She leaned her own upper body closer to his, stroking his hair with one hand and his metal forearm with the other. It had always intrigued her, his cybernetic body part, with its simultaneous fluidity and invulnerability. In their stolen moments together so long ago, she would entwine her fingers with both of his hands, marveling that he could hold her hand so gently with the carbonadium fingers she’d seen bend steel bars like green twigs. She’d always held those thoughts and feelings close to her heart, until she’d been forced to bury them for sanity’s sake after Odessa. And now…

[“And they’ll tell us everything they know.”] She leaned in closer, until her head was almost touching his. [“Who knows how many more we’ll be able to find because of them?”]

He stilled, and for a moment, she thought he might reply with ‘yeah’ for the umpteenth time. Or maybe that he’d pull away. She wasn’t sure. But instead, slowly, hesitantly, she could feel his fingers trailing across her lower back, and then his arm was around her waist.

He said nothing, and neither did she. But she allowed herself to circle her own arm around his waist and pull him in closer to her.

Seconds ticked by in comfortable silence. James was so still, Natasha thought that maybe he had drifted off. But he lifted his head just then and looked at her. Hesitated.

Without a word, he slid off the bench and onto his knees in front of her. Both arms went around her waist and he gazed up at her with eyes that were painfully blue. She waited, actually holding her breath, for what would come next. 

Another second dragged by. And then he laid his head down on one of her thighs. His arms tightened around her waist and he let out a long breath that she hadn’t realized he had also been holding. 

She looked down at him, at the vulnerable position he’d put himself in, and felt the familiar ache in her chest swell into being again. He seemed so lost, so desperately in need of something or someone to cling to. 

Her hands went to his head, both of them, and she began carding her fingers through his hair in a soothing, repetitive motion. First one hand, then the other, smoothing the long wavy locks off his forehead and trying to show him at least a fraction of what she felt for him. Maybe he didn’t need it, maybe it was unfair to burden him with it, but damn it, she couldn’t keep every last bit of it inside.

She was still human, after all. Life hadn’t taken that away from her.

[“We’ve done this before,”] he murmured after an untold amount of time had passed. He hadn’t moved from his spot in the slightest. [“Not on the couch the other day. But before. Haven’t we?”]

[“It does feel familiar, doesn’t it?”] She leaned forward, bending her upper body over him almost protectively and continuing to comb her fingers through his hair. [“And good.”]

He shivered beneath her fingertips and tightened his arms around her. [“Not in Brooklyn though. Not that day you put me to bed after… after…”] He exhaled sharply. [“But before. Long before.”]

It was getting more and more difficult to avoid having the conversation. Which meant that when things finally did come to light - which they would, thanks to Jean Grey - she would have to explain to James why she hadn’t told him everything. Or at least told him something. And what would he think of her then?

[“Do you like it?”] was the best she could come up with.

[“I do,”] he said without hesitation, his voice so plaintive and so sincere that she found herself leaning forward even more, to rest her upper body against the back of his neck and shoulders and give them both the closeness they seemed to be begging for.

His fingers scritched lightly at her lower back. Something like a small smile drifted across his face. “Natalia…” He breathed her name with the sort of reverence that made her heart ache.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway, coming toward the locker room, and James’ eyes widened suddenly. Before Natasha could say anything, he backed away and was on his feet in a flash, turning and facing the doorway, his whole body rigid with tension. 

Nothing had changed then. They had long since learned to hide their relationship from anyone and everyone. The instinct to bury even the smallest hint of personal truth ran deep.

She looked up, instantly alert, to see Rogers standing in the doorway with a look on his face that said he wasn’t sure what he’d walked in on. And the tiniest part of her felt resentful of him for intruding on her moment of closeness with James, though she was realistic enough to admonish herself that she had no claim to him. Rogers was his guardian, after all, not her. He lived with Rogers, even slept in bed with him. What did she have to offer?

_You’re being ridiculous, you know._

She didn’t care.

“Hey, Buck.” Rogers turned to her and nodded. “Nat.” He cleared his throat and tried not to look uncomfortable, though he failed miserably as he did every time he tried to hide his feelings. Rogers wore his heart on his sleeve, and it was painfully easy to read him.

“Listen,” he was saying, “it’s past four in the morning, and we need to be getting home. We’ve got no chance of waking up before noon as it is. What do you say, Buck?”

James nodded. “Just let me get my boxes of cheese waffles. I left them behind the other day.” His hand strayed to the pistol at his thigh. “And sign these in, and then I’ll be ready.” 

He left the locker room without a backwards glance.

\---

**Ramsau am Dachstein, Austria**

Forty-nine hours later, they had followed a trail from Salzburg to Abtenau to Forstau to a little, green backwater that barely qualified as a village. And yet the locals had given it the unwieldy name of Ramsau am Dachstein. 

They had slipped into the awkwardly named, very hilly village in the dead of the night, because anything even slightly more obvious - such as posing as tourists - would have immediately alerted not just HYDRA, but the whole damn village.

Intelligence had led Bucky and Natasha to Ramsau am Dachstein’s largest chalet, which they were creeping silently through right then. They had started at the fourth floor and worked their way down, and then finally they were in the basement that obviously doubled as some sort of secret control room, and Bucky had to state the obvious.

“They’re gone.” He lowered his M4 rifle. “They cleared out.”

Natasha, looking around the room herself with her Widow’s Bites at the ready, seemed to come to the same conclusion. “Looks like it.” She went to the main computer console, began tapping away at the keyboard, and shook her head. “And with enough lead time to wipe everything out. The server’s been corrupted. No files, no pathways even.” She sighed irritably. “A dead end.”

Bucky stared hard at the floor for a long moment. “Damn it,” he said quietly.

Very quietly.

“They must have known,” Natasha said. “But how?”

The General.

The General would have either alerted them to SHIELD’S presence or he would have had the targets neutralized himself. And wherever the hell he was right then, he was probably laughing at their failure.

At Bucky’s failure specifically.

At Bucky’s inability to even lead SHIELD to his location, because he could never do that. He couldn’t betray his commanding officer, not to SHIELD, not to Steve, not to-

No.

No!

“No!” He screamed something ugly and incoherent and then slammed his foot into one of the metal file cabinets, sending it flying across the room and smashing into the concrete wall.

It crashed to the ground, its drawers falling open, but of course they were empty. They were all empty, because HYDRA had taken everything, they were way ahead of SHIELD, they had gotten away and the General was laughing somewhere.

Laughing, and Bucky couldn’t do a single fucking thing about it.

“James?” Natasha didn’t flinch as the heavy cabinet crashed loudly into the wall, though she did take a few steps toward Bucky. [“You weren’t this angry the last three times these guys managed to get away from us. So what is it now?”]

[“It’s him,”] Bucky said through gritted teeth, and he didn’t fucking care that he was supposed to speak English while on the secure line. [“It’s him. I know it’s him.”]

“Lukin?” Natasha’s eyebrows knit, and she took another step closer to Bucky. [“He couldn’t have known we’d pick up on where these guys were going to be. We didn’t even know we were going to find out. What makes you so sure?”]

[“I know…”] His whole body trembled with anger. He braced his metal hand against one of the desks, digging his fingers into the cheap wood. [“I know…”] He breathed hard through his nose. [“One of the targets in Alpe des Chaux said… he said…”]

He took another breath. He could say this much. The target had given away that information, after all, and Natasha had overheard it. He wasn’t betraying anyone.

Stop that!

[“That he was… was onto a group in Salzburg.”] He ground his teeth together. A bead of sweat slid from his scalp and down past his ear. [“And so… he… he knows.”]

Natasha laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. Looked into his eyes calmly, without hesitation. [“Then there wouldn’t have been this trail. If he’d known exactly where to find them in Salzburg, we never would have found these other sites.”] She shook her head, her eyes flitting around the room. [“No, they might have run out of here because they were afraid of him, but he hasn’t been here yet. My guess is he’s been a day or so behind us the whole way.”]

His eyes strayed to the hand on his shoulder. It was strangely calming. [“The trail…”] he said quietly. [“The trail is cold either way.”]

[“Yes.”] Natasha’s eyes brightened as she gently squeezed his shoulder. [“But if it’s cold for us, it’ll be cold for him too. And that means there’ll be another opportunity at another time.”]

He said nothing to that. The trail wasn’t necessarily cold for the General. He had decades of experience with HYDRA and near limitless resources to spend tracking any rogue agents down. His knowledge of the inner-workings of HYDRA would be greater, too.

Bucky sighed.

He could break away from the group and track down the General on his own. That would be faster and easier, and he had a much better chance of getting to him that way. Maybe…

Natasha was looking at him with such keenness, he had the uncomfortable idea that somehow she could see exactly what he was thinking. 

He closed his eyes, then bent his head until their foreheads were touching. [“I’m not... I’m still here.”]

[“Yes you are.”] Her hand, the one that wasn’t resting on his shoulder, came up to rest on the back of his neck. [“And you’re going to stay here. Aren’t you?”]

He was supposed to say that, yes, he was going to stay there, and that, no, they didn’t have to worry about him running away. But he liked the feel of her hands on him, especially on his neck, and he liked how close they were, and he couldn’t seem to help himself.

[“Why?”] He cracked an eye open and something like a smirk flitted across his mouth. [“You going to come after me if I slip away?”]

She smirked right back at him. [“You really think I’d do anything else?”]

[“Oh no. Not you.”] He shook his head gently. [“I know enough to know to be afraid of you.”]

[“Smart boy.”] Her smirk broadened. [“And I know enough to know when to remind you to be afraid.”]

[“You know,”] he said softly. [“It’s pretty early in the morning. The breakfast cafes might be opening soon. We could get _palatschinken_ before extraction.”]

Natasha rolled her eyes, but the smirk didn’t budge. [“Pancakes again? What is it with you and breakfast foods?”]

Just then, the secure channel came to life again. “Come on, guys.” Steve’s voice sounded pained. “I keep telling you, speak English on the headsets. No one knows what’s going on over there.”

Bucky scowled. “We want breakfast before extraction, Steve. We’re in a good region for pancakes.”

“Really?” Steve sounded both confused and amused. “I thought pancakes were an American thing. Or at least an English one.”

“The ancient Greeks made pancakes, Rogers,” Natasha broke in, rolling her eyes and smiling at Bucky. “And the Ethiopians use them instead of plates. America doesn’t have a monopoly on pancakes.”

And, putting an arm casually around Bucky’s waist, she steered them both towards the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of the Dutch snacks and breakfast foods that Bucky mentioned are definitely A Thing. Fried cheese waffles (kaas wafel) in a box are one of the Netherlands' great culinary inventions, third only to breakfast sprinkles (hagelslag) and caramel cookie waffles (stroopwafel). Actually, maybe fourth? Poffertjes (mini pancakes with powered sugar) are pretty damn good too.
> 
> Waffle House Jogs and Memory Walks: come for the romance and recovery narrative, stay for the culinary education.
> 
> Feed the author! Comments, questions, feedback, and all of that good stuff are always warmly welcomed, hoped for, and greatly appreciated.


	14. Rodchenko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The assistant looked pale and terrified. “They’re here for you.”_
> 
> _Rodchenko looked at him over the rim of the flask. “They?”_
> 
> _The assistant nodded. “The military. There’s a General waiting in the pharmacy. He asked for you by name.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Russian characters are speaking to each other, assume they're speaking Russian. No [language brackets] needed.

**Belgorod, Russia**  
**February 1995**

In the dead of the night, Dmitriy Stepanovich Rodchenko strangled a scraggly, half-dead rooster with his bare hands.

He had been walking home after working his janitorial shift in the local primary school. The boss had given him a pay envelope stuffed with rubles, but Rodchenko had done the math, and once again there would be little money for food after rent had been paid. The currency was worthless; hundreds of rubles amounted to practically nothing.

The state hospital had again paid him in a bag of potatoes, and he and some of the other doctors were maintaining a small vegetable patch in what used to be the hospital’s garden. The cabbages had grown well; the turnips, not so much. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get by on. He ate many fried potato and cabbage pancakes.

About a block from his flat, the half-dead rooster appeared in the road. Maybe it had broken out of the wiry chicken coop kept in the back of one of the other buildings or maybe it was just providence, but Rodchenko didn’t care. He dropped his bag and choked the life out of the rooster, and at five in the morning in the communal kitchen of his flat, he made potato and cabbage and rooster stew.

He would eat well enough for a week.

The next morning, he took a flask of stew to the hospital and stored it in his unheated office in the pharmacy. He nursed a mug of hot water - the hospital had long since run out of tea - throughout the morning. It was enough to savor the idea of the stew until lunchtime. 

Right when he was sitting down to lunch, on a desk piled high with records books - they had switched to keeping records by hand some time ago, as they could no longer afford to maintain the computers - an assistant poked his head into the office.

“Dmitriy Stepanovich.” The assistant looked pale and terrified. “They’re here for you.”

Rodchenko looked at him over the rim of the flask. “They?”

The assistant nodded. “The military. There’s a General waiting in the pharmacy. He asked for you by name.”

“By name?” A ball of ice dropped very suddenly into Rodchenko’s stomach and he set the flask aside on the desk. “By name?” he repeated stupidly, and the assistant just nodded with the same petrified expression on his face.

“Maybe he just wants medicine for his mistress?” the assistant whispered. “And doesn’t want his wife to know? Which is why he’d come all the way out here instead of going to a hospital in Moscow?”

Rodchenko stood and attempted to smooth down his lab coat with shaking hands. “Perhaps,” he managed, because if he didn’t make himself speak, he might scream instead. He steadied himself as best he could and then walked out of his office and into the pharmacy, and right across the counter stood a General in full uniform, along with several armed soldiers. 

“Dmitriy Stepanovich Rodchenko.” The General removed his cap and smiled as if at a joke only he had heard. His curiously dark eyes, though, glinted with something very different from humor. “I’ve been very interested to meet you.”

He was not a tall man, nor a large one. His body was trim beneath his perfectly-fitted dress uniform, without the gauntness of near-starvation that seemed to have become rampant during the last decade, but his physique was not imposing. His hair was black and perfectly combed and the black goatee he sported was neatly trimmed. His eyes were almost black themselves, so much so that they gave the unsettling appearance of having enormous pupils, like holes in his face. 

He had the bearing of a man accustomed to being obeyed - no, more than that. Accustomed to having his every desire immediately fulfilled.

Behind him, his entourage stood silent and intimidating. They wore not dress uniforms, but battle fatigues, and their eyes were narrowed like wolves’. They held their weapons as though they wanted nothing more than to use them.

“You were not an easy man to find,” the General went on as he looked around with clear distaste at the rundown state hospital, eyes sweeping over the peeling paint on the walls and the chipped and battered furniture. “One would almost think you’d been trying to hide.”

Rodchenko smoothed down his frayed lab coat with hands that were beginning to tremble with nerves. He was suddenly very conscious of how small and worn he looked before this man. How in stark contrast to this General’s crisp appearance, Rodchenko’s hair was streaked with grey from malnutrition, his mended and threadbare clothing hanging loose on his reduced frame. His lab coat had long since turned grey; he carefully rationed washing powder, and often went without any at all.

He looked - and felt - inconsequential compared to this General with his glittering eyes and his wolf-like guards.

And yet, the General had sought him out, had he not?

“Comrade General.” He wasn’t sure if that was even the proper form of address anymore. In their _newer, better_ Russia, many rules had changed. “How can I help you?”

“What an interesting question.” Again the General smiled a curious sort of smile, one that did not reach his eyes. Those seemingly bottomless pits bored into him. “One best answered in private, I think, for the sake of decorum.”

He knew, Rodchenko thought with a sudden, gut-sliding terror. The General knew about his attempts to leave Russia, about his contact with the British Embassy, and his tentative - yet rapidly formalizing - plan to seek political asylum in Great Britain. He knew, and he had come for him.

And yet, that made very little sense. Even if he had been found out, they wouldn’t send a General for him. They would never send someone so important for someone so inconsequential. And so there had to be something else.

“Very well,” Rodchenko said carefully, raising the swing panel of the counter so the General could walk past. “In my office, if you like.”

The General followed him into the office, and Rodchenko was relieved to see that the armed wolves stayed in the waiting room. 

“Now then.” The General spared a single withering glance around the drab and dingy space, at the grit in the corners that no broom would ever lift, at the dark stains on the peeling paint and the stress cracks in the furniture.

Rodchenko held his breath. Waited.

“I have been looking for the assets of Department X.” The General’s smile remained fixed on his face and his hollow eyes once again bored into Rodchenko. He did not sit or even move towards any of the rickety chairs, though his empty gaze flickered over them with distaste. “Some were taken, and I have recovered them. Some were lost, and I have rediscovered them. But one in particular interests me.”

And there it was.

“I wouldn’t…” Rochenko licked his lips and slid his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“No?” A hint of that smile finally made its way to the General’s eyes. “Doctor Pushkin’s writings must have been in error then. He mentioned a young doctor he had handpicked to succeed him, a doctor who had performed miracles in the field of biochemistry. A doctor who began his career with Department X before he had turned twenty-five years old.” 

The General looked right into Rodchenko’s eyes, and Rodchenko could see himself reflected in their blackness. It was not a pleasant sight.

“That doctor is the highest-ranked surviving member of Department X,” the General went on. “And the man best qualified to give me access to the single greatest achievement Department X had to its credit in all its long years of history.” 

“I don’t know anything,” Rodchenko whispered, his whole body going cold with a seeping, primitive terror. “I’ve taken nothing. I know nothing.” 

“Of course you haven’t _taken_ anything, Doctor.” The General peered down his nose at him. “I’ve already recovered everything that was stolen, and I’ve dealt with the people who were foolish enough to take it. You’re no fool, are you, Doctor?”

There was no point in lying to this man. That much was obvious. And perhaps only the truth could save him anyway.

He licked his dry lips again. “The department was shut down in 1988. We had no time to even close things down properly. I know nothing of what happened after that. I took nothing. If I had,” and despite his fear, he couldn’t help the bitterness that seeped into his tone, “I wouldn’t be working in a state hospital in Belgorod, of all places.”

“I’m well aware of what happened then.” Impatience resounded in the General’s voice and flashed in his eyes. “And I’m not interested in what happened afterwards. I’ve spent long enough cleaning up after it to know. But you do know something about what went on before 1988.” The General moved a step closer to him. “And I promise you, what you know is worth enough to bring me here.” His eyes narrowed. “You know about the Winter Soldier.”

Rodchenko involuntarily stepped back. “The Winter Soldier?” He clenched his hands, hidden in the pockets of his coat. “I thought he would be dead by now.”

The General snorted. “General Karpov certainly would have allowed it to happen. And if I hadn’t found his cryogenic chamber by accident, he might very well have been dead by now.” He locked eyes with Rodchenko. “No, Doctor, the Winter Soldier is alive. And you are going to help me return him to active duty.”

Rodchenko hesitated.

He could see it all slipping away very quickly. His opportunity to flee Russia for Great Britain. Being able to work in research and development once again, instead of giving long hours at a crumbling state hospital that could only pay him in moldering bags of produce, while scrubbing toilets at night to earn enough money to pay rent on a shared, cold-water flat. He should have been in the prime of his career, not withering away to nothing because of malnutrition and exhaustion and bitter anger at what the government of their _newer, better_ Russia had done to all of them.

Opportunity had been right in his grasp, and this unnamed General wanted to take it away, and for what?

“I thought the government would have no further need of the Winter Soldier.” He couldn’t hide the resentment in his tone, and for a stupid, dangerous moment, he didn’t care. “What with our ‘openness’ and our ‘restructuring’ in our newer, better Russian Federation.”

“Well, well.” Again the General looked down his nose at Rodchenko. “If there was ever clearer proof that no one believes the pretty lies from the Kremlin.”

Rodchenko said nothing to that.

The General chuckled, as if it was all some sort of joke, and went on. “Of course there’s a need for the Winter Soldier. And even if Moscow didn’t want him - which I assure you, if they knew he still existed, they would - other governments are going to want him. _I_ want him.” The General’s eyes shone greedily. “ _Glasnost_ and _perestroika_ be damned, I’ll not let something like that go to waste. Not when he can be put to such wonderful use now that I’ve found you.”

Great Britain and the chance for a better life hovered just out of reach. Rodchenko couldn’t let that opportunity slip away from him. 

“I’m needed here,” he said carefully. “At the hospital. There aren’t many left who are willing to work.”

That much was true. Many of the hospital staff had simply stopped showing up when it had become obvious they wouldn’t be paid. Rodchenko supposed he had stayed on if only to make meaning out of some part of his life.

“Is that so?” The General’s face twisted into that smile again, and his black eyes clamped themselves onto Rodchenko as the General reached into his pocket and tossed a handful of folded papers down onto the desk. “There is no such thing as altruism, Doctor. Don’t think of me as a fool. I know perfectly well how long you were willing to stay here.”

Rodchenko stared at the papers in stomach-twisting horror. Even before he managed to take them off the desk with one trembling hand, he knew what they were: his correspondence with his contact within the British Embassy.

He had been right all along. The General knew.

“You understand your position.” The unholy glee in the General’s voice was as obvious as it was sickening. “And if I’d come here in any government capacity, you’d be on your way to a frozen gulag out in Siberia right now. So you can count yourself very fortunate that neither Moscow nor the Army knows I’m even here.”

Rodchenko couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t meet the General’s eyes. The words on the paper blurred suddenly, dangerously, and for one moment, he thought he would lose consciousness right there. But life had never been so merciful, and he stayed frozen horribly in place.

“Who are you?” he finally managed in a small, choked voice.

“My name is Aleksander Anatolyevitch Lukin.” The General inclined his head slightly in an ironic gesture, the corner of his mouth twisting in that humorless smile. “But that doesn’t even begin to tell you who I am.” 

He studied Rodchenko for a long moment with those empty black eyes. “Tell me,” he said finally. “Have you ever heard of HYDRA?”

By the end of that conversation, General Lukin had offered Rodchenko a substantial sum of money to come work for HYDRA - under the auspices of the General’s legitimate and very profitable Kronas Corporation - as the head of a new research and development department. And, of course, as the head of the newly restarted Winter Soldier project. 

Within a few days, he had been whisked away to Moscow, given a large sum of money upfront, and told to make himself presentable before he started work. 

A few days after that, Rodchenko brought the Winter Soldier back into the world again. 

Several months later, the General must have been pleased with Rodchenko’s work, as he introduced him to a very skilled real estate agent who helped Rodchenko purchase a beautiful dacha by the Black Sea.

Had it really been twenty years ago?

Rodchenko was not a sentimental man, and he knew from bitter experience how quickly one’s circumstances could change.

Captain America had kept his word, and Rodchenko had not been formally charged with anything, nor extradited to Russia. Instead he was living on a floor of Avengers Tower - now also SHIELD’s terra base of operations - along with other critical members of SHIELD’s non-field based staff. He had a very nice suite of rooms to himself and access to SHIELD’s research and development department, along with a standing invitation to join them on a regular basis.

Sometimes he did.

He knew enough to know that he was under house arrest. The AI in the walls - which introduced itself as JARVIS and asked Rodchenko if he would prefer Russian instead of English - never let him take the elevator to the ground floor, though it did encourage him to make use of the staff swimming pool and solarium. He was allowed to have groceries and books delivered, along with practically anything else. He just couldn’t leave.

Not that he would have anyway. The General was out there somewhere, and though the Avengers had taken the Winter Soldier into custody, Rodchenko would be an easy enough man to kill for even the greenest of assassins.

He was dragged out of those thoughts by a chime at the front door of his suite, along with JARVIS announcing in Russian that “Captain America is at your door, Doctor. Shall I let him in?” And a moment later, Captain America was standing in the living room.

\---

Steve was glad to see that Rodchenko looked well. He’d tried to make sure that every possible courtesy had been extended to the man, and he’d gotten back reports that Rodchenko had worked with the R&D department on a number of occasions and helped them make significant progress on a few of their projects. 

He wondered how much thought Rodchenko had given to Bucky during his time at the Tower.

“It has been a while,” Rodchenko said without preamble. “You came to ask me something.”

Steve nodded. “It’s about the poison.” His eyes narrowed and his face hardened. “HYDRA’s started using it again. We’ve caught a few of them alive, but too many of the rest of them have been poisoning themselves before we can question them. We need an antidote.” 

He looked Rodchenko in the eyes, searching for the spark of decency he knew the man had. The spark that had led him to advise Steve to be kind to Bucky, and that had made him turn himself in rather than try to escape justice. He wanted Rodchenko to know the extent of the good he could do, and throw himself into it with gusto.

“I read what General Karpov and Dr. Pushkin wrote about you. They said you developed some kind of revolutionary truth serum when you were still in school.”

Rodchenko looked at him for a long moment. “While working on my medical degree, yes. Is the focus of my medical degree.” His expression darkened. “It is why Pushkin bring me to Department X.”

“I know.” Steve blew out an angry, frustrated sigh.

Rodchenko hadn’t even wanted to be a medical doctor, and yet he’d been enough of a genius at it to draw the attention of men like Pushkin and Karpov. If he’d been allowed to follow his dreams of being a linguist, who knew what he might have accomplished instead? 

“But what matters is how much you know about biochemistry. You’re probably the best hope we have for coming up with an antidote, and we need your help. Do you think you can do it?”

“The poison is very…” Rodchenko seemed to search for a word. “Very tricky. It changes itself as soon as it enters body.” He settled down onto one of the couches and looked up at Steve. “So when HYDRA agent dies, original compound is not present. Make antidote very difficult, Captain.”

“I know.” Steve scowled. Maria Hill had said the same thing months ago. “That’s why everyone we had working on it couldn’t manage an antidote.” 

He looked around the room, wanting to sit down. Rodchenko hadn’t invited him to do so, and he didn’t want to be impolite, but he wondered whether Rodchenko would even think to offer him a seat. 

“And the poison works so damn fast, nobody from the science division could tell us a thing.” He sat in one of the armchairs and looked over at the doctor. “But I’m willing to bet you can do better.”

“Poison is instant.” Rodchenko shrugged. “Antidote would have to be faster than this. Faster than instant.”

“How?” Steve’s eyebrows knit. Was Rodchenko describing something that wasn’t possible? It certainly sounded like it. “What’s faster than instant?”

Another frustrating shrug. “Who knows? Has not been done yet.”

Steve’s heart sank, and he couldn’t keep the feeling from getting to his face. “So it can’t be done?”

Something like a scowl crossed the doctor’s face. “Did I say that? You so quickly decide this can’t be done? I have not even seen poison in laboratory yet.”

“So…” Steve wasn’t sure what to think anymore. He felt entirely lost. “What are you saying, exactly?”

That time, Rodchenko definitely and obviously scowled. “I am saying show me poison in laboratory. I can’t say if can be done or cannot be done until I can see it.” He paused, then, “Play with it. On some rabbits, I think.”

“I don’t know if that’s an option.” Steve dug into his pocket, coming out with a plastic bag containing three tiny white pills. “We took these from a couple of HYDRA agents the other day. They weren’t quick enough to use them.” He held the bag out to Rodchenko. “But these are all we have. I don’t know how much playing you’ll be able to do with only that much.”

Rodchenko snorted, but he did take the bag. “Is easy enough to make poison if I can see it first.”

“Oh.” Steve felt slightly stupid, and hoped it didn’t show. “All right then.”

Rodchenko studied the contents of the bag for a moment, then placed it down on the coffee table. “Anything else, Captain?”

“No.” Steve stood up, shaking his head. “But this has got to be priority number one. I’ll pass the word along to the rest of the R&D department, and I’ll let them know that they’re following your lead on this project. As far as I’m concerned, you’re in charge.”

“Okie dokie,” Rodchenko said, and at Steve’s raised eyebrow, added, “Heard this on TV.”

“Okie dokie.” Steve couldn’t help but smile. Such a random Americanism to be hearing out of the mouth of a former Soviet scientist. He held it in his mind as he nodded in farewell to Rodchenko and turned to leave.

“How is he?” Rodchenko said suddenly.

“Bucky?” Steve stopped in his tracks, a curious tingling suddenly in his heart, and turned back to Rodchenko with a lump in his throat. He wanted so badly to see the hope he felt for Bucky’s recovery reflected on the doctor’s face. “He’s gotten a lot better.” 

Rodchenko had been largely responsible for putting Bucky in the condition he’d been in when Steve had first encountered him, but Steve knew that the doctor had also found it in his heart to care for Bucky in some strange way. But he also hadn’t thought it was possible for Bucky to improve. What would change for him, Steve wondered, when Bucky proved him wrong? 

“I think you’d be impressed.”

Rodchenko was silent for a long moment. Then, seemingly in spite of himself, he asked, “Better how? Impressed how?”

“He’s a lot calmer now.” Steve came a few steps back into the room, wondering if he should sit back down. “He’s been getting a lot of therapy. Psychic therapy as well, to help him get his memory back. And he’s living with me.”

“All his memory?” Rodchenko frowned. “And why would you do that to him, Captain? Why would you want him to have _all_ his memory?”

“Because it wouldn’t be right not to.” Steve sighed. He’d had this debate with himself many times since Natasha had first given him the file. It had always been torturous, but the result - and the reasoning behind it - had always been the same. “Because he’s spent too long not knowing, and he can’t know who he is unless he remembers who he was.”

“Better for him not to know,” Rodchenko said flatly. “Better not to know all seventy years of memory.”

“Nobody gets to make a decision like that.” Steve shook his head with finality. “Not anymore. Taking his memories away from him was what damaged him so badly to begin with. He’s gone without remembering for long enough. He deserves to have his life back.”

Rodchenko snorted. “You call that life, Captain? That seventy years? You damage him more that way.”

“How?” Steve looked Rodchenko in the eyes; the smaller man didn’t look away. “By taking away the uncertainty? By showing him just what was done to him, and how you and Pushkin and Karpov and Lukin made him do those things? By giving him back his real memory and his real past, back from before any of them ever got their hands on him?” He shook his head. “He deserves to know. And he deserves to be able to decide for himself who he really is.”

After a moment, Rodchenko broke Steve’s gaze and stared at his hands. “I know what we did. I know what I did. And it can’t be undone. There is…” He shook his head. “There is nothing kind about giving him back all his memory as Winter Soldier. As this Bucky, perhaps. As Winter Soldier…”

“Maybe the things he was forced to do can’t be taken back,” Steve persisted, “but at least we can let him remember who he is. And we can help him have a real life even after everything he’s been through.”

He thought of Bucky and his nightmares. Thought of how crawling into bed next to Steve helped Bucky sleep through the night. Thought about everything good that was left to find, buried under the source of the nightmares. And thought again that denying Bucky his memories - any of his memories - would have made him no better than the ones who had stolen Bucky’s memories to begin with.

“You told me before that he could never get better, and I told you then that I didn’t believe you.” Steve shook his head slightly. “I didn’t then, and I don’t now. He’s got the best help we could find for him. The best therapist in the business, the most powerful telepath in the world, and the best friends he ever had in his life.” 

Steve looked at Rodchenko, hoping the doctor would look up so he could meet his eyes again. “He’s going to get better. I won’t settle for anything less.”

He did look up, but it took him a few seconds. “Well, Captain,” he said quietly. “It’s your show.”

Steve looked at him for a long moment, shaking his head slowly, unable to understand. Why couldn’t Rodchenko bring himself to believe that Bucky could recover? Had he really been crushed so far down by the Soviets and by HYDRA that he didn’t believe anything positive was capable of happening? Had a lifetime of experiencing the worst robbed him of the ability to hope for the best?

It was unfortunately a question that would have to wait. But there would be other times to ask it, and by then, Bucky’s recovery would have progressed even further. Maybe even to the point of Rodchenko being unable to deny it.

“I guess it is.” He sighed and turned to go. “And I need to go run it. Meanwhile, you’d best get started on that antidote.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feed the author! Questions, comments, and kudos are all warmly welcomed, appreciated, and hoped for! (Especially on this drizzly, cold day.)


	15. Mind Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The voice startled Steve, and he turned abruptly to see Bucky standing there. Except it wasn’t Bucky as he was now. His hair was shorter, his build was slighter, and his face was much less haggard. Most of all, though, his eyes weren’t as weary. He stood there staring out at the frozen tundra, clad only in a pair of old fashioned, two piece pajamas and a thin bathrobe, a lost and frightened expression on his face._
> 
> _“Bucky?” Steve reached out for him. “Where are we?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> When they go through the memory walk, sometimes the soldier is referred to as James and sometimes as Bucky. It depends on whether or not the memory is being viewed from Natasha or Steve's point of view. Because during that time period, the soldier wouldn't have thought of himself by name, of course.
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Language brackets are used sparingly. If characters are speaking in a memory, then they are speaking Russian. If characters are speaking in the present, then ["language brackets"] will indicate that they're speaking Russian.

**somewhere**  
**late June 2015**

They stood in the middle of an endless expanse of white. Either there were no walls and ceiling, or they blended in so seamlessly with the white floor that he couldn’t tell where they began. There was something solid under their feet, but it might have only extended a few yards - or less than a single step. The place could have been any size, or any shape, or anywhere. There was no way of telling, and no obvious way out either.

They had stumbled into this field of blinding white nothingness suddenly. One moment, they had been in the middle of one of Bucky’s memories - the Winter Soldier had been tasked with assassinating several high level Japanese executives in their own high security offices in Tokyo - and then… nothing.

Bucky was nowhere to be seen.

“Jean?” Steve turned towards her with fear rising in his chest. “What happened? What is this place?”

A frown skittered across Jean’s face. “I think…” She glanced between Steve and Natasha, then walked forward a few steps, one hand outstretched. “I think this is brain damage.”

“Brain damage?” Steve felt a fist of ice clench his heart. “From what? When?” He looked around wildly.

Natasha’s brow furrowed. “And where’s James?”

Jean closed her eyes for a moment. “He’s safe. Back at the anchor memory. For his own protection, his mind won’t let him see his own brain damage.”

“What is this from?” Steve turned around in a circle, his arms reaching and groping out before him. He couldn’t find the walls, there was no door, and he didn’t even know where the floor might end, but he had to find a way to get to Bucky. “How bad is it? How far does it go?”

“I don’t know yet.” The look on Jean’s face tore a hole through Steve’s heart. “From what you’ve told me, I suspect some of it’s from when he fell from the train during the war.”

“His file.” Natasha folded her arms. “Back in 1945, Dr. Pushkin wrote in James’ file that there was brain damage from the fall.”

“As for how far it goes…” Jean shook her head. “I don’t know yet.”

Steve didn’t waste any more time. He walked on ahead, his arms out in front of him to find the wall or the door, his mind set on finding Bucky and making sure that what Jean had said was true - that Bucky was safe. And he was so focused on finding Bucky that he almost didn’t notice when the white room melted away around him, to be replaced with a wide, dimly-lit corridor of greenish tile.

He stopped in his tracks, looking around in wary confusion. Turning to look behind him, he could only see more of the hallway. The white nothingness was nowhere to be seen.

Where was he? It looked like some sort of hospital, if the lack of windows and the sterile-looking tile were anything to judge by, but that could have meant anything.

He squared his shoulders and set his jaw. Wherever he was, the only thing that mattered was finding Bucky. And so he plowed on ahead, following the hallway until he came to a heavy steel door. It was the sort he might have expected to find on an aircraft carrier or a submarine - the kind that had a heavy wheel in the center instead of a knob, the edge lined with a heavy rubber gasket. He wrenched at the wheel, hauled back on the door with all his might…

And stared out into another expanse of endless white.

Only this one wasn’t blank and featureless. Here and there was an old pine tree, twisted and gnarled by the wind, and every so often there was the tip of a boulder poking out through the blanket of white. But mostly, there was snow. It whirled past his face on the freezing wind, and it piled up into dune-like shapes on the ground, and it stretched out forever.

“No way out.”

The voice startled him, and he turned abruptly to see Bucky standing there. Except it wasn’t Bucky as he was now. His hair was shorter, his build was slighter, and his face was much less haggard. Most of all, though, his eyes weren’t as weary. He stood there staring out at the frozen tundra, clad only in a pair of old fashioned, two piece pajamas and a thin bathrobe, a lost and frightened expression on his face.

“Bucky?” Steve reached out for him. “Where are we?”

Bucky shook his head and didn’t look at Steve. “There’s no way out.”

Steve moved closer to Bucky, his hand reaching out to come to rest on his shoulder. And that part confused him - hadn’t Jean told him that it wasn’t possible to interact with Bucky’s memories? If this wasn’t a memory, then what was it?

“Bucky?” Steve moved around in front of Bucky, putting both hands on Bucky’s shoulders. “Do you know who I am?”

Bucky’s gaze seemed to look right through Steve. “There’s no way out,” he repeated, voice blowing away in the wind somewhere. And when Steve turned to look out at the snow, to try to find a way out, the wind suddenly turned warmer. The blowing snow vanished, and the smell of salt came to his nose. And the frozen wasteland had somehow become the beach at Coney Island.

Bucky sat there on the sand, a Nathan’s cup of soda beside him and half-eaten hot dog in his hand.

“Bucky?” Steve jogged over to him, across the sand. “Are you all right?”

“Got kicked out, I guess,” Bucky said through a mouthful of hot dog. “One minute, we were looking at… at things… and the next, here I am.”

“Yeah.” Steve sat down beside him. “About that.”

Just what in the hell was he supposed to say? How could he go about telling the person who meant more to him than anything in the world that he had brain damage? That he wasn’t sure how bad it was or how long it had been there or what it might mean for his recovery?

Bucky pushed the remainder of the hot dog into his mouth and washed it down with a swig of soda. “Was it bad?” He kept his eyes fixed on the waves lapping gently at the shore. 

“I…” Steve sighed. “I don’t actually know yet.”

Bucky tore his eyes away from the ocean and looked at Steve. “Were there…” He frowned. “Were there more? More than the businessmen?”

“What?” Steve’s brow furrowed in confusion for a moment until he realized that Bucky hadn’t been talking about the sudden transition. He’d been talking about the mission itself, the one they hadn’t been able to see the end of. “Oh.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. None of us saw the rest of what happened.”

“James?” Steve turned his head to see Natasha and Jean approaching. Natasha looked relieved, and came right over to sit down on the other side of Bucky. “You look like you’re all right.”

“We found something else,” Jean said, and something in her tone must have alerted Bucky, because he looked up at her sharply. “If you’re ready.”

Bucky frowned and drained off the rest of his soda. “I guess.”

Jean sighed and settled herself in the sand across from Bucky, drawing her knees up to her chest. “We found brain damage.”

“The file said there was brain damage,” Natasha said. “From when you fell from the train in 1945. But I didn’t expect to find it the way we did.”

“It was like a big empty room.” Steve kept a cautious eye on Bucky, hoping the news wouldn’t shatter him. “And you were just gone.”

Bucky said nothing, and after a moment, Jean continued. “We don’t know how far or deep it goes, but I suspect there will be scattered pockets of it around your mind. From the fall, and from…” She inhaled. “And from what they did to you over the years.”

Another lengthy silence, and then Bucky said, “Okay. So what can you do?”

To Jean’s credit, she didn’t flinch from the question. “I’m so sorry, but... there’s nothing that can be done. Memories lost from brain damage can’t be retrieved. All we can do is work and heal around it.”

Natasha remained silent, though she did put a hand on Bucky’s metal shoulder. Steve, however, turned back to Jean with a startled expression on his face and a lump rising in his throat.

“You can’t fix it?” He sputtered for a moment. “I thought you could fix everything. What does this mean?”

A pained expression flickered across Jean’s face before she gathered herself. “I can help find memories that have supposedly been erased. I can help reorganize his mind. But I can’t put back what isn’t there.”

“So…” Bucky licked his lips and inhaled slowly. “So we work around it? We work around it and keep going?”

Jean nodded. “We work around it and keep going.”

“All right.” Steve took a deep cleansing breath. There was still a way to help Bucky, after all, and he wasn’t going to let him down. Not after Bucky had managed to come so far, not when there was so far still left to go, and certainly not when he needed all the help he could get. “So let’s keep going. All right, Buck?”

\---

They stood on a high hilltop overlooking a low green valley. Along the edge of the steep hill fifty feet below them ran a narrow ribbon of highway. The road was deserted, the valley quiet, and the scene altogether peaceful.

James lay prone on the ground in front of them, motionless as he peered through the telescopic sight of a high-powered rifle propped on a bipod. Only the subtle movement of his back as he breathed gave any indication that he was alive at all.

Natasha knew exactly where they were and what they were about to witness, and it twisted her stomach into a tight knot. Any moment now, she would come around the bend in that narrow roadway, driving an unremarkable car with a terrified Iranian nuclear engineer in the back seat. And as soon as the car came into James’ field of vision…

The car rounded the curve. The rifle in James’ hands cracked once, twice, three times in quick succession. Below them, the car’s brakes screeched despairingly as the stunned Black Widow in the driver’s seat fought to keep control of the vehicle as rubber shredded away from the wheels and metal met asphalt. With the tires shot out, though, there wasn’t a chance.

The car skidded into the flimsy guardrail, tearing through it and teetering on the brink of the cliff for a single harrowing second before gravity claimed it. And James was already on the move, leaping to his feet with catlike agility and snatching up a semiautomatic rifle from the ground beside him before jumping out into space over the edge of the cliff.

Natasha watched with a horrible tightness in her chest as James landed in a crouch and walked with unhurried steps toward the car. She watched as the door burst outward, kicked off its hinges by the booted feet of her younger self. She watched as she crawled out of the car, a pistol in her hand, blood streaming down her face from a gash in her forehead, and pulled the screaming engineer behind her. And she watched as James, his eyes blank and dispassionate, aimed his weapon as though he was pointing his finger and shot through her to hit the engineer. The man crumpled to the ground, shot through the stomach. She fell as well, both hands clamped over the bleeding hole in her side. And James paid her no heed as he lifted his weapon again and blew the back of the engineer’s head away with a single shot through his upper lip.

She turned away from the sight of herself bleeding out. Turned, and saw the look on James’ face - the real James, not the hollow thing that had killed her engineer and almost killed her - and felt sick to see it.

She had to turn away from that too. Back to the gory scene in front of her, the past Odessa nightmare, where James was now slowly and deliberately raising his weapon yet again. Training it on her as she lay there with blood pouring from her head and her side, her pistol inches away from her trembling fingers, training it on her and then freezing. Hesitating an endlessly long time.

And then turning away. Slinging the weapon over his shoulder. And disappearing beyond the smoke of the burning car.

Before she had time to wrench her mind and her heart away from the terrible dark places they were going to, the scene abruptly changed. The green valley and the bloody wreck of the engineer were gone, replaced by sterile white walls and pristine mechanical equipment surrounding the awful mental recalibration chair. James sat in the chair, Dr. Rodchenko a few steps away tapping something out on a keyboard. And suddenly, the door banged open and in strode General Lukin.

“Mission report, Soldier,” he said without preamble. “Now.”

James just barely lifted his eyes to meet Lukin’s. “Target neutralized, sir. Two shots, through the stomach and the head. No witnesses.”

“And the Black Widow Romanoff?” Lukin’s eyes practically glittered with savage anticipation.

James hesitated. Just barely, perhaps only a split second, but a hesitation all the same. “Shot through the stomach, sir.”

Behind them, Rodchenko wordlessly turned from the keyboard, an apprehensive expression on his face.

“Through the stomach?” Lukin’s face darkened and his voice grew dangerously quiet. “Did you confirm the kill as you did with the engineer?” 

James said nothing, but his gaze fell away into his lap.

Lukin advanced on James with each accusing question. “Did you see her brain? Open her carotids? Spike her heart?” 

“Sir…” Rodchenko began, and still James said nothing.

“You left her alive, didn’t you, Soldier?” Lukin’s hand lashed out and seized a handful of James’ hair, jerking his head back. His face contorted with pain, but he remained silent. “Didn’t you?”

“Sir.” Rodchenko cleared his throat softly. “The Black Widow Romanoff wasn’t officially part of his mission parameters, and-”

“You assured me this would not happen, Doctor.” Lukin rounded on the doctor, his hand never turning loose of its grip on James’ hair. “I told you to burn it out of him. You swore to me that you had.”

“Yes.” Rodchenko’s hands trembled and he slid them into the pockets of his labcoat. “But we didn’t specifically order him to neutralize the Black Widow.” His voice took on an edge of pleading. “A mistake. One that can be corrected.”

“Corrected?” Lukin released James’ hair and whirled to confront Rodchenko, his face twisting in rage. “Corrected how? He had a perfect opportunity, and he wasted it! He had all the time in the world, he could have scattered her brains across half of Ukraine with one shot, and instead he walked away! He let her live, and that means he failed! _You_ failed! Don’t talk to me about correcting mistakes!”

Rodchenko’s mouth thinned into a hard line and he said nothing.

Lukin turned back to James, his hand shooting out to grab hold of his hair once again and yanking his head back to force James to look into his eyes. “Romanoff is a traitor. Traitors are to be eliminated on sight, regardless of mission parameters. So why didn’t you finish it, Soldier? Answer me!”

For a long moment, James just stared back at him with wide eyes. Then very quietly, he said, “Romanova was shot through the stomach, sir. I-”

“So it’s _Romanova_ now, is it? You remember her old name?” The change that came over Lukin was frightening. Gone was the screaming, replaced by an icy coldness as his hand left James’ hair and he leaned slowly inward to fix James with an arctic glare. “Well, well, well. Then why don’t you tell me why you didn’t finish her?”

“I…” James started to say, but his thoughts seemed to spin away somewhere. He shook his head. Looked away.

“Answer me, Soldier,” Lukin said in a low voice that dripped with frigid venom, “or I swear I’ll make you regret it forever.”

Quietly, just barely perceptively, James whispered, “Didn’t want to.”

The crack of Lukin’s hand across James’ mouth was startlingly loud in the tense silence of the room. And when Lukin turned slowly to face Rodchenko, the doctor actually flinched away from the look on Lukin’s face.

“Condition him, Doctor.” Lukin’s voice had become a harsh, guttural whisper. “And do it properly this time.”

Natasha turned away from the scene. Whatever else she’d seen throughout her long life, she didn’t have the stomach to watch what was going to happen next. And when she turned, she saw a sickened and horrified look on Rogers’ face and a look of deep pity on Jean Grey’s. But she didn’t see James at all.

_The beach_ , she thought instantly. _He couldn’t take it, so he went to the beach._ And she turned away wordlessly to find the door, to go after him. But when she strode across the room and opened the door, she recoiled at the sight of wind-whipped snow. An endless amount of it, broken here and there only by a weathered tree or two. And when she turned back to the room she’d just left, it was gone. A dark hallway of greenish tile stood there in its place.

And standing in the middle of the hallway, arms wrapped around himself, clad only in pajamas and a bathrobe, was James. A much younger James, from the look of it, his hair cut short and his face infinitely less world-wearied, looking out in mute horror at the frozen Siberian tundra before him.

“James?” She spoke to him reflexively - in Russian, naturally. [“What is this place?”]

He flinched, but he didn’t look at her. “There’s no way out.” He whispered the words in English.

She was more than a little surprised to hear him respond. After all, Jean Grey had gently admonished Rogers when he’d tried to interact with James’ memories, reminding him that no one would hear or see him. But James had reacted to her just now. So… what did it mean?

[“You can hear me?”] She reached out hesitantly, unsure of what she was doing, but then put a decisive hand on his left shoulder. Felt the familiar unyielding carbonadium beneath the thin fabric of his robe and pajama shirt. How could she be doing this with a memory? ]“What’s happening here? Where are we?”]

Again he flinched, though he didn’t pull away from her. “I don’t speak it.” He shook his head. “Don’t care what they say. I don’t speak it.”

He didn’t understand her, she realized with distinct unease. What exactly was going on?

“Do you know who I am?” It felt strange to speak to him in English, especially since he’d always responded to her most readily when they were using Russian. “Or where this is supposed to be?”

He stared past her, eyes wide. “No way out,” he said hollowly. “There’s no way out.”

She suddenly wanted very badly to find James. The real James, not whatever she was interacting with right then, and as soon as she thought of it, the tundra shifted and melted and became the beach at Coney Island. And sitting there on the sand, his head in his hands, was James.

[“I didn’t know.”] He whispered the words before she had even sat down next to him. [“I swear I didn’t know.”]

[“I know you didn’t.”] She sat down beside him, drawing her knees up to her chest. [“Did you stay long enough to hear yourself say you didn’t want to do it?”]

[“It’s in my head now. It’s-”] He choked on the words, but kept going. [“It’s in my head, whether I stay to watch it or not.”]

[“I know you didn’t want to do it.”] She turned to look at him, and it was harder to do than she might have liked. She hated the pain on his face, hated seeing him suffer. Hated what had been done to him, and the people who had done it. [“You let me live, even though you must have known Lukin was going to punish you for it. Do you know how brave that was?”]

His hands trembled. His lower lip trembled. And all he said was, [“I swear I didn’t know.”] 

[“I know.”] She forced her own feelings down, forced a composure she didn’t feel into her voice and onto her face. Unwrapped an arm from around her knees and circled it tightly around James’ shoulders. [“And I don’t blame you.”]

[“Why?”] He stared down at the sand with wide, horrified eyes. [“You should. You know you should. I still did it.”] His hands shook violently. [“I still did it.”]

[“I know that too.”] Her mouth twisted wryly. [“And I’ve got the scar on my stomach to prove it.”]

A strangled moan slipped out of his mouth and he again buried his face in his hands.

[“But let me tell you something else.”] She leaned into him, her arm still tight around his shoulders. [“From the time it happened until the time Steve told me who you really were, I thought you did it because the mission was more important to you than anything else.”] She shook her head. [“But I know better now. I’ve known better for a while, and that changes everything.”]

[“It changes nothing.”] He took a deep, shuddering breath. [“Nothing.”]

[“You’re wrong, James.”] She cradled him against her, her cheek against his, knowing that he’d understand soon. That before long, everything would be laid bare. [“It changed everything.”]

\---

She sat alone by the window of a small cafe in the Munich Central Train Station. He saw her before he entered, her red hair tucked under a knit cap, a blue Kanken backpack by her sneakered feet. She looked every bit the part of a university student on her winter holiday.

He entered the cafe, and she barely glanced at him, but the place was packed with travelers coming and going, and there were only a few spare seats. Including the one across from her, which he took, setting his large traveler’s backpack on the floor by the table. He looked like a tired traveler - maybe American, maybe from some Eastern European country. It was so hard to tell these days, after all.

“Mind if I sit here?” he asked in German, though he didn’t wait for her to reply before sliding into the seat. 

“Help yourself,” she responded with a carefully cultivated air of distraction. There were eyes and ears everywhere. “There’s only about half an hour before the train comes.”

“Half hour’s all I need.” A smile skittered across his mouth and he gestured one gloved hand toward her empty coffee cup. “Can I get you anything else while I’m up?”

“How about a pastry?” She smiled back, equally fleetingly, and continued to scan the crowds. “Make it a surprise.”

“I can do that.” He got up from the table and came back a few minutes later with two cups of coffee and a plate of halfway decent looking Franzbrötchen, considering they were in a train station. 

“Nice buns,” she remarked with a smirk as he passed by her to sit back down. “They look very sweet.”

“Funny.” He waggled his eyebrows, slid back into his seat. “The lady at the counter told me the same thing. They must be _very_ sweet.” 

“Well, she’d know, wouldn’t she?” She arched an eyebrow at him, smirking all the while as she picked up one of the Franzbrötchen and put it on a napkin in front of her. “She spends all day looking at them.” She licked the glaze from her fingertips. “Sticky, too.”

He lifted the coffee cup to his lips and blew across the top. “I’ll be exploring Munich for a few days, and then I’ll go east.” An experimental sip of the coffee. “How about you?”

“This is my last day here.” She idly jiggled the stirring stick in her own coffee cup. “I’m heading east myself later this afternoon.”

“Well, then.” He grinned, took another small sip of the coffee. “Maybe we can meet up sometime.”

The scene abruptly shifted, the crowds spiraling away like smoke and the open platform area of the station giving way to the crowded sterility of Dr. Rodchenko’s laboratory. James, as always, sat in that horrible chair, but the restraints hadn’t been activated and the instruments attached to him seemed more for diagnostic purposes than anything. 

Rodchenko was sitting on a high stool a couple of feet away from the chair, a look of deep concern on his face. And - was there also a hint of unease in the way he kept furtively glancing around the room?

“You have to be careful, Soldier,” he was saying in a low but urgent voice. “I’ve been telling you this for years now. You can’t afford to be anything less than perfect for him. No excuses, no reason for him to become angry with you.”

A flicker of annoyance passed over James’ face. “The mission went perfectly. All three targets were neutralized in well under the time frame given. There were no witnesses. In, out, done.” He shook his head. “The General has nothing to be angry about.”

“No?” Rodchenko returned the annoyance in expression and tone and dug into one of the pockets of his lab coat, coming up with a handful of photographs. These he held out to James, who took them hesitantly. “You were photographed with the Black Widow Romanova at a train station in Munich.”

James stared at the photographs for a moment. “So?” His expression hardened. “So what? She was there. We had coffee. It changed nothing about the mission.”

Rodchenko shook his head irritably. “Don’t you see? There was no reason for the two of you to even acknowledge one another, let alone-”

“Why?” James demanded, pushing the photographs back toward Rodchenko. “Why shouldn’t we acknowledge each other? We’ve worked together several times and-” 

“And she doesn’t work for HYDRA.” Rodchenko cut James off, ignoring the proffered photographs. “The General doesn’t-”

“Then why let us work together at all?” James glowered at him, the photographs still clenched in his hand.

Rodchenko returned the glower. “Because she works for a part of the government that doesn’t officially exist, and because the General finds it prudent to have favors owed to him by those parts.” He folded his arms. “And because together, you produce results that he likes.”

James snorted at that. “Then I don’t see what the problem is.”

“The problem is that the General doesn’t like the idea of anything linking you two together, much less the idea of you two flirting in public.” Rodchenko reached out and took the photographs. “He was absolutely livid when he showed these to me.” 

For a long moment, James said nothing, jaw clenched tightly. Then, “We weren’t flirting. We had coffee while she waited for her train. And it changed _nothing._ ”

“Yes, well, the General didn’t fall for that line of reasoning when I tried it either.” Rodchenko looked sourly at James and ran a hand through his untidy grey hair. “I had my work cut out for me, convincing him that this was a coincidence and nothing more. And Romanova’s handlers are apparently concerned as well.”

“They have nothing to be concerned about.” There was an ugliness to James’ tone now, one that he wasn’t controlling very well. “Nothing happened. We had coffee. Why should this even be an issue?”

“Because -” Rodchenko looked around furtively before he continued, his voice hushed. “- the General is a man accustomed to making an issue out of anything that even slightly displeases him. And so is everyone who has come to power lately. So if you want to keep out of trouble, Soldier, you need to keep away from Romanova. Both for your own good, and for hers.”

James said nothing.

“Well?” Rodchenko raised an eyebrow challengingly. “What do you have to say to that, Soldier?”

James glared at him. “Can I go now?”

The clinical setting melted away, the contours of the scene blurring and distorting once again to reveal an unimpressive hotel room. The door was abruptly flung open and Natasha stumbled in with James, their arms tangled around one another and their lips hungrily pressed together. She kicked the door shut behind them while yanking down the zipper of James’ coat. James, meanwhile, picked her up bodily and brought his face to the hollow of her throat.

They crashed around the room in their passion, bumping heavily into walls and leaving clothing and weaponry strewn around the floor. Natasha, clutching a handful of curtain with James’ head between her thighs, ended up pulling the whole curtain rod down from the wall and leaving it where it landed. James bumped into a standing lamp, knocking it to the ground and sending the lampshade rolling under the table. She knocked over a potted fern, its clay pot shattering loudly as it hit the floor. James flung her bra across the room, where it caught on the corner of a picture frame and hung there. Everything was noise and sweat and urgency and deep, primal need.

And then it was suddenly over. They collapsed against each other in the very rumpled bed, the sheet twisted around their legs but covering very little. She still straddled James, her soft breasts pressed against his bare chest.

He looked up at her, eyes shining with a heady mixture of adoration and exhaustion. “You…” he panted. “You always did impress me.”

“You should be impressed.” She let out a breathless laugh in the midst of panting for air. “But you’re pretty impressive too.” A wicked smile. “Your mouth especially.”

“You liked that, did you?” He grinned, hands going to her waist and running gently up and down her sides. “We can go again. Any time you’re ready.”

“When I’m ready?” She returned the grin, flexing her thighs together and squeezing his waist between them, pulling a gasp out of him. “You won’t be ready again for a while. I’ve got plenty of time to catch my breath.”

“Then maybe…” His hands slid further down until he was cupping the firm globes of her ass. “Maybe we can just stay here. Enjoy this for a bit longer.”

Her face twitched at that, a brief cloud of pain passing over it and remaining in her eyes, and she leaned forward to press herself against him and wrap her arms tightly around his upper body. “Only a bit?” The playfulness in her voice sounded forced as she kissed his right shoulder.

“I have a bit more time.” He began kneading her ass, a grin flitting across his face. “Another hour or so, I think.”

“I miss when you used to spend the night.” She kissed her way gently from his shoulder to his chest. “When we could fall asleep together and sometimes wake up in the middle of the night for another go around.” She smiled, but there was a note of frustrated sadness in it. “I miss that.”

“I miss it too, but…” He licked his lips and abruptly pulled his hands away from her ass. “People are getting suspicious, Natalia.” Gently he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back slightly so they could look at each other. “We don’t want that. We can’t give them any reason to be suspicious of either of us.”

The cloud passed over her face again, and she looked down at him with a tortured look in her normally unreadable eyes. “Suspicion has never needed proof in Russia, James. You know that as well as I do.”

“I know. I know, but…” A strange look of confusion passed over his face. His metal hand strayed upward, cupping her cheek. “I just… I want to enjoy this for a little bit longer. Just a little bit, and then…”

“And then?” She leaned into his touch, closing her eyes as the cool metal gently touched her skin. There was a note of hope in her voice, buried under a layer of sadness. “What happens after this, James?”

“After this?” He closed his eyes for a moment. Took a breath before looking up at her. “After this, we don’t see each other for a while. Just long enough for suspicions to fade and…” Another deep breath. “Just a little while. Not too long.”

“I see.” Her face fell even more. “Is that what you want, though? What you really want? Or is it just what you think you’ll be allowed to have?”

Another look of confusion darted across his face, but he pushed past it, the most hesitant of smiles settling over him instead. “I’m happy I was able to have even this much,” he said quietly. “We both knew this was never going to be for us. Not forever.”

“But that’s just it.” She shook her head, no longer even trying to keep up the mask. “If we’re happy with this, why shouldn’t we have it for as long as we want?” 

He said nothing to that, but his smile faded away to be replaced with a look of perturbed misery. 

Angry frustration crept its way into her voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy in my life. And if we can’t have this, and we can’t even decide for ourselves when it’s going to end, then what are we going to have afterwards?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded breathless. Desperate. “I don’t know what we’ll have, but we knew this was never going to be for us.” He cupped her face with both hands. “That’s not our life, Natalia. It never has been. We knew that.”

“But it’s different now, isn’t it?” She looked down at him with pain and something near grief in her eyes. “Now that we know what it’s like to be together, now that we’ve had to chance to feel at least a little bit of what a different life might feel like, it’s not so easy anymore to just say it’s not for us. Not when saying that means that someday we’ll have to give each other up.”

“But we knew that.” He was panting again, this time in fear or confusion or maybe both. His fingers threaded into her hair, as if he were afraid to let go of her at all. “We knew that the whole time.”

“I know.” She shook her head, her face beginning to contort. “And that just makes it worse now. We knew it before we knew what being together really meant. At least I did. And now that I do know…”

The words seemed to burst out of him. “I love you.”

His eyes went wide at that. For a long second, his breathing stopped and he stared up at her in frozen shock, fingers still tangled in her hair.

Then finally, quietly, he said, “I love you, Natalia. I just wanted you to know that.”

“I know.” It seemed to break something loose in her as well; she smiled a wobbly smile down at him and fell forward again to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his neck. “I know you do, James. And I love you too. So very much.”

The scene blew away like smoke on the wind, to be replaced by a modern office of chrome and glass and steel. Lukin sat at a wide glass-topped desk, a pile of mail in front of him, slitting the envelopes with a letter opener and reading the contents. James stood in front of the desk in his black cotton Kronas fatigues, hands clasped behind his back. Eventually, Lukin looked up from his mail.

“Soldier.” Of course Lukin didn’t bother to stand. He remained seated, toying with the sharp letter opener, and glaring at James with his hollow-looking eyes over a thin, disingenuous smile. “I so rarely get interesting mail.”

James waited. Said nothing.

“You’ve been here for some years now.” Lukin slid the letter opener into an envelope, slowly and deliberately ripping it open. “Do you find you’re settling in?”

James’ eyes followed the letter opener for a moment before refocusing on Lukin. He had no idea of how many years he had been there. It seemed like quite a few, but he couldn’t remember when Comrade General Karpov had died or how much time had passed since. He had never been very good at keeping track of dates or even the passage of time. 

Still, the General would not want silence for very long.

“Sir?”

Lukin’s dead-eyed smile widened slightly. “I’d imagine things must feel very different for you.” He withdrew the letter from the envelope and opened it, folding the paper back along its creases with slow and careful movements. “General Karpov dead, the Soviet Union disbanded, working for a non-governmental entity… it must be odd.”

A beat, then, “No, sir.”

“Settling in well then, are you?” Lukin set the letter down on the desk in front of him and smoothed it out carefully and painstakingly. “No difficulties? Nothing that would cause you to behave erratically or -” He raised an eyebrow. “Unprofessionally?”

His jaw clenched momentarily at that, but still he managed, “No, sir.” Another pause, and then he took the risk. He was going to be questioned anyway. “And you’ve seemed satisfied with my work so far, sir.”

Lukin’s smile thinned, and his black eyes narrowed. “Yes, I have, haven’t I?” He steepled his fingers, the letter now forgotten. “You’ve managed to come very close to living up to the legends General Karpov spun about you.”

“I wasn’t aware that he had,” James said slowly and carefully. He was trapped in a dangerous situation that he couldn’t extract himself from, and there was nothing to be done for it but wait.

“Oh, he certainly did. From the things he said about you and the work you had done, anyone would think you were the Angel of Death himself.” Lukin’s eyebrows lowered, knitting together like gathering thunderclouds over his narrowed eyes. “Clearly, he exaggerated.” 

James said nothing to that. There was nothing that was safe to say.

“And clearly, he never realized just how stupidly you were capable of behaving.” The last shred of Lukin’s facade of calm seemed to evaporate like fog in the sun as he reached into a drawer and tossed a handful of photographs on the desk. The fully visible ones showed James and Natasha outside the hotel they’d shared only the other day.

“Did you honestly think there was anything you could hide from me, Soldier?” Lukin’s voice had become low and menacing. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Or didn’t you care?”

James glanced at the photographs for one horrific second, but he wasn’t stupid enough to take them. Behind his back, he clenched his hands until the fingernails dug into the soft flesh of his palm.

And still he said nothing.

“Answer me, Soldier,” Lukin snarled. “Why would you knowingly violate protocol to this degree? And then compound the idiocy by thinking you could conceal it from me?”

A dangerously long time passed before James could make himself answer, but it was more important to remain calm. 

“I’ve followed your orders to your exact specifications, sir. I know you’ve been satisfied with my work.” He hesitated, then, “This is nothing.”

“Nothing?” Lukin brought his open hand down on the photographs with a loud bang, a few of them scattering. “This isn’t nothing, Soldier. What ever gave you the idea that you were permitted to associate on that level - on any level at all - with Romanova? With anyone?” Lukin rose from his chair, hands flat on the desk, and leaned in towards James. “What ever gave you the idea that you were permitted to do anything other than follow my orders as though they were the word of God?”

James eyes widened slightly. “Sir?”

He cast about for something else, something to mollify the General in one way or another, and came away with nothing. But absolute silence was just as dangerous. 

There was nothing he could say.

“You will never work with Romanova again.” Lukin’s words were clipped and harsh, landing like blows from a hammer. “Her handlers at the Red Room will deal with her insubordination as they see fit. But as of now, this foolishness between the two of you is over. You are never even going to lay eyes on her again, do I make myself clear?”

The word slipped out before James could consider it. “No.”

For a moment, there was silence in the room. Shock registered on Lukin’s face. But gradually, that shock gave way to cold comprehension, and then to seething anger.

“No?” Lukin’s voice turned icy and venomous. “Is that insubordination I hear, Soldier? Insubordination on top of every other brainless action you’ve performed lately?” He clenched his fist, crumpling the photographs unrecognizably. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear. You and Romanova - this silly little lovesick drama you’ve been playing with each other - it’s over. And I want you to look me in the eyes right now and acknowledge that.”

“No,” he said wildly. Stupidly. Unaware by that point of what exactly he was refusing, but needing to do it anyway. “No, that- that doesn’t make sense. It’s stupid.”

He was on very dangerous ground right then, and he didn’t fucking care.

“You’ve been satisfied with my work so far. With our work so far. Why should it stop now?” He backed up a step, but couldn’t seem to calm himself. “Why should it stop at all?” He was almost panting now. He had to get ahold of himself. “Why should it stop for something that hasn’t interfered with any of our work? For something that isn’t anyone’s goddamn business?”

“Enough!” Lukin brought his fist down on the desktop again, hard enough to make the whole thing shudder. The glass top didn’t shatter or even crack, fortunately, but the rest of the desk quivered at the blow. Lukin’s face was red, his eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched. A vein throbbed and pulsed in his temple, and the cords stood out in his neck.

“Don’t you dare presume to tell me what’s my business and what isn’t!” He pointed at James, jabbing his finger out at him to punctuate his furious words. “You are mine, Soldier! Every moment of your life is mine, and if you do anything at all, it’s because I allow it!”

“Well, you’ve allowed me to fucking work with her!” He was nearly shouting now, half-aware of how recklessly stupid he was being, but long past the point of caring. “Why should you care what I’m doing with her so long as I’m getting all of my work done?”

“Because your work may very well end up _being_ her someday!” Lukin screamed, practically frothing with rage. “And if it came to that, if the two of you were still pathetically mooning over each other, you wouldn’t pull the trigger! You’re stupid enough that I can easily see you choosing your loyalty to her over your loyalty to your mission and to me! And I will not have that, Soldier, I will not!”

Something let loose in James’ head then. 

He wouldn’t have that.

He wouldn’t be separated from her. Not because of the General, not because of anybody. She was all he had ever had, all he had ever even wanted or dared even to hope for, and he wouldn’t be separated from her.

Before he knew what he was doing, the letter opener was in his hand. He vaulted over the desk and tackled the General to the floor and-

He was sprawled on the floor suddenly, breathless and limp, the letter opener slipping uselessly from his nerveless fingers. He couldn’t lift his head. He couldn’t lift his arms. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. And all he could do was lie there and twitch feebly as the sole of the General’s shoe came down slowly and deliberately on his fingers and the letter opener was lifted away.

“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t have been prepared for this, Soldier?” Lukin crouched down beside James, his foot still on the fingers of James’ right hand. “Did you imagine I had no means of controlling you? Of making sure you couldn’t stray too far?” He laughed acerbically, seized James by his hair, and yanked his head up off the floor to look him in the eyes. 

“Did you think you were a man?” he sneered, leaning in and lowering his voice. “Did you think you would be allowed to do anything at all without my approval? You weren’t made to think, Soldier. You were made to kill, and only at my command.”

Lukin let go of James’ hair abruptly, James’ head thudding to the floor like a dropped bowling ball, and stood. “You are going to pay dearly for this, Soldier.” He smiled ghoulishly. “And so is Romanova.”

Natasha couldn’t stomach any more.

\---

Steve couldn’t contain his horrified revulsion. Seeing Bucky lying there nerveless, defenseless on the floor with terror and pain in his eyes while Lukin - that unforgivable monster - callously stood on his fingers and spoke to him in the most insulting, demeaning, humiliating way imaginable made Steve’s gorge rise. It made him clench his fists, knowing that he couldn’t step forward and knock Lukin off his feet with a punch. Knowing that he couldn’t even tell Lukin what he thought of him. And worst of all, knowing that he couldn’t change any of it - that he just had to stand there impotently and watch.

Because it was only a memory.

It hadn’t all been terrible, of course. Watching Bucky and Natasha flirt with each other in the train station had brought a smile to his face, and seeing them kiss each other so passionately in the doorway of the hotel room had warmed his heart. Of course, for the sake of decency and privacy, Jean had brought him out of Bucky’s memory and to the beach for the duration of that particular memory. And he hadn’t wanted to intrude on something so private, so he waited. Though he was troubled by a nagging feeling he couldn’t identify as he sat there on the beach, while Bucky and Natasha watched their old relationship play out. It was strange to be on the outside for any part of Bucky’s recovery, and he didn’t like the way it felt.

But he hadn’t liked being brought back from the beach either. And he was more than ready to ask Jean to take them all back there when the scene shifted once again.

Bucky was strapped into that horrible chair, limp and sagging against his restraints. Rodchenko stood before him, an expression on his face of bewildered horror.

“Why did you do it, Soldier?” he whispered. “The General is furious, and I don’t know what he’s going to want to do. What in the world possessed you to try to attack him?”

Bucky’s unfocused gaze settled somewhere on the doctor. “Love her,” he slurred. “I love her.”

Rodchenko’s eyes widened with fear. “Don’t say that.” He leaned in. “For the love of God, don’t say that to the General.”

“I don’t…” Bucky just managed to shake his head. “I don’t care anymore. It’s true. I don’t care.”

“Soldier, listen to me!” Rodchenko hissed, fear and frustration competing for room on his face. “I’ve never seen the General this angry. I told you when he first took over to be careful of him.” He shook his head. “This is different. If we don’t find some way to mollify him, then I don’t know how bad this may get.”

“What’s he going to do? Kill me?” Bucky snorted. His eyes were slowly coming back into focus. “Let him.”

“I don’t know what he’s going to -” Whatever Rodchenko had been about to say was abruptly ended by the slamming open of the door as Lukin stalked in. The doctor hovered nervously near the chair as if trying to offer some degree of protection to Bucky, but Lukin ignored him.

“And so here we are, Soldier.” Lukin’s face was its usual mask of barely-controlled anger, but there was an unpleasant glimmer in his black eyes. “Time to put an end to this foolishness once and for all.”

Bucky glared back silently, his mouth set in a hard line and his eyes almost daring Lukin to do his worst. And Lukin seemed to rise eagerly to the bait.

“Your disobedience has irritated me ever since I first brought you here.” Lukin locked eyes with Bucky. “You never treated General Karpov with anything approaching the insolence you’ve shown me. He never had anything but praise for you, but you have managed to find every possible means of disappointing me. And this-” he scoffed loudly. “This latest bit of nose-thumbing is the final straw. You are going to learn what it means to anger me, Soldier.”

“I’ve done…” Bucky breathed out hard through his nose. “I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked of me. You’ve never been dissatisfied with -”

“Shut up!” Lukin thundered suddenly, his eyes flashing. “You have never once shown me the respect and deference you once showed Karpov! You have been insolent and disobedient, and this little game you and Romanova have been playing was the worst insubordination I’ve yet had out of you!” His eyes narrowed, and a terrible gleam of anticipation came into them. “But that will never be a problem again. Not after I’ve finished with you today.”

A strange look flickered across Bucky’s face. He licked his lips and tried again. “Until today, I’ve never been deliberately-”

It was Rodchenko who cut him off this time. “This can be corrected,” he murmured, sliding his hands into the pockets of his labcoat. “This was, of course, an anomaly. An error. It need not happen again.”

Lukin slowly turned to face the doctor, an unholy smile taking shape on his face. “Oh, I know that, Doctor. In fact, I’m counting on you to make sure of it.”

Steve suddenly knew what was about to happen, and his heart clenched painfully in his chest. An icicle impaled his stomach, and his throat closed tight. He felt his arms and legs go numb, and tears welled up in his eyes. But no matter how much it hurt, no matter how much he wanted to reach out and choke the life out of Lukin where he stood, no matter how much agony he knew Bucky was going to experience in just a few short moments, he couldn’t stop what was about to happen. Because it had already happened.

Because it was only a memory.

“This anomaly goes deeper than his disobedience, Doctor.” Lukin had his eyes on Bucky as he spoke, the look of satisfied anticipation on his face positively inhuman. “Romanova is his weakness. His Achilles’ heel. I want every last trace of her obliterated from his mind. In fact, I want even the desire to form that sort of relationship with anyone ever again obliterated.”

“Sir?” Rodchenko looked confused and apprehensive. “I don’t think I understand… This can be corrected without such drastic measures.”

“He is a killer, Doctor.” Lukin smiled ghoulishly. “My perfect killing machine. And I want everything else gone.” He turned to face the doctor, his black eyes like bottomless pits and the smile on his face the most horrible thing Steve had ever seen.

“Burn it out of him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, everybody! Let's hope 2017 is less of a dumpster fire than 2016.
> 
> As always, feed the author. Nom nom nom.


	16. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You keep… You keep putting yourself out there.” Bucky exhaled slowly. “For me. Dragging me to therapists. Watching awful, horrible memories. Seeing how bad it actually was, and knowing it’s going to get worse. Just… dealing with all of this.” Another breath. “So… why?”_
> 
> _The answer came to Steve so easily - it was so obvious to him, and had been for so long - that he wondered why Bucky had even needed to ask the question._

**same day**  
**late June 2015**

Bucky didn’t say a word on the entire ride home. Neither did Natasha, and so neither did Steve. And the ride felt that much longer and less pleasant because of it.

When they pulled up to the curb, Bucky was out of the car almost before it had come to a complete stop. He took advantage of the convertible top being down to vault over the side and head for home. Steve naturally tried to follow him, but Bucky didn’t wait. He was through the front door of the building before Steve had even gotten his seatbelt off.

“Did you want to come up, Natasha?” Steve sank back in his seat. Everything felt so tenuous right then, so somber in light of everything that had been revealed, that even he was at a loss for words.

Natasha hesitated for a long moment, her hand never leaving the steering wheel. Finally she said, “I need to decompress, Steve.”

Steve. Not Rogers.

“I need to see where my head is.” A weak sort of smile flitted across her mouth, but didn’t land there. “I think we all do.”

“I think you’re right.” Steve looked over at her, very aware of how unsettled she must have been feeling just then. How she was managing to keep it together was a mystery to him, but it gave him a whole new appreciation for what kind of stuff she was made of.

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, her lips lingering there for a moment. “Be kind to yourself,” she murmured before settling back into her seat. 

“You too, Nat.” He reached over and put a hand on hers, squeezing gently. “Don’t go putting any of this on yourself. It wasn’t your fault any more than Odessa was Bucky’s.”

That same weak smile danced on her lips for a moment. She turned her hand over in his and squeezed back. “Good night, Steve.”

“Night.” He held her hand for a moment longer, giving her what he hoped was an encouraging smile, before letting go and getting out of the car. When he closed the door, she drove off a lot more slowly than she generally did. And as he watched her go, he realized he was reaching up to touch the spot on his cheek where she’d kissed him.

He hoped she’d check in once she got out to the Bartons’. Because of course that was where she’d be headed. He just wanted to know she was all right.

“Bucky?” He called as he shut the apartment door behind him and slid the chain home. There was no response, but a quick look through the rooms led him to a large Bucky-shaped lump under the covers of the bed in Bucky’s room - the room he hadn’t slept in for weeks. The room that he really only used to store his clothes and get changed in, because he’d taken to spending the night in Steve’s bed and that arrangement had been working for the both of them.

Hadn’t it?

Still, Steve thought as he yanked off his shoes, whichever bed it was, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to crawl right in next to Bucky.

“That was awful.” Steve wrapped an arm around Bucky and curled himself protectively around him. “I’m so sorry, Buck.”

Bucky said nothing, but he didn’t pull away either. And for a long moment, the two of them simply lay curled against each other under the blankets.

“I’m never going to let him hurt you again.” It seemed like such a hollow, limp thing to say - what did it matter, Steve asked himself angrily, when the damage had already been done - but it was all he could do. “I swear to God, Bucky, I’d die before I ever let him come close to hurting you again.”

Another stretch of pained silence, but finally Bucky whispered, “I don’t want you to die because of me. Enough people have already died because of me.”

“They didn’t die because of you, Buck.” Steve hugged him tighter, curling his own body around Bucky’s like a cocoon. Trying to envelop him, to shield him from the world that seemed only to want to hurt him. “They died because of Lukin and Karpov. The people who used you as a weapon. None of it was your fault.” 

“You keep…” Bucky’s voice was heavy with pained exhaustion. “You keep saying that…” He sighed and seemed to go limp against Steve’s body. 

“Because it’s true.” He sighed against the back of Bucky’s neck. “But look. All I’m saying is that I want to keep you safe from him. You’ve suffered enough.”

“Why…” Bucky started. Every word seemed like a struggle to form. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Because she didn’t want to put too much on you at once, before you were ready to handle it.” Steve closed his eyes and hugged Bucky tightly. “She didn’t want to hurt you either. And I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t my story to tell.”

“You knew?” Bucky snorted, but there was no heat behind it. “Everyone…” He inhaled deeply. “Everyone knows more about my life than I do.”

“Because that was the way they wanted it.” Steve fought down the anger he felt toward Karpov and Pushkin and especially Lukin. “They didn’t want you to know anything about your life, because if you did, you’d turn on them for stealing it from you.” He sighed again, his breath ruffling the hair on the back of Bucky’s neck. “But the reason for the therapy is to give all of that back to you.”

Bucky said nothing to that, and for another long moment, they just lay wrapped around each other. Steve closed his eyes, burrowed his face into Bucky’s neck, and wondered how much longer Bucky would have to suffer. He deserved to be free from the torture the Soviets and HYDRA had inflicted on him. He deserved to be safe and comfortable and happy. He deserved better than he’d gotten.

Steve felt himself beginning to drift off, and he didn’t fight it. The therapy session had been exhausting for him, which meant that it had definitely been worse for Bucky. Maybe they both needed some sleep…

\---

Bucky remembered.

_“He is a killer, Doctor. My perfect killing machine. And I want everything else gone.”_

Bucky - only he had been the soldier then, because he had hardly ever had a name, and then only with Natalia - sat locked in the chair, a growing sense of unease, and then panic, taking hold in his sluggish mind.

The General had done something to his mind when the soldier had tried to kill him. He couldn’t remember what. He had grabbed the letter opener. He had leaped across the desk and tackled the General to the floor. And then a bomb had exploded in his head, and he was helpless and limp on the floor.

_“Burn it out of him.”_

“Sir,” the doctor said carefully, a horrible expression on his face. “What you’re asking for is… that is, we don’t…” He glanced at the soldier, then back at the General. “What you’re asking for could damage his mind. Permanently.”

“I want his mind scoured clean of insubordination, Doctor.” The General glared at the doctor. “Whatever damage it causes him, he’s brought it on himself.”

They went back and forth like that for who knew how long, but eventually the General’s orders won out. They always did. And the doctor called his technicians in, and one of them offered the rubber bit to the soldier, and he was conscious of saying “Don’t do this. Please don’t do this,” to the doctor, without even fully knowing what he was asking for.

And then the halo swung down, and his whole life lit up in an explosion of searing pain and violent agony.

Somewhere, at some point - maybe they had taken a break, maybe the doctor was typing out something on the machine - the soldier murmured for him to “stop, please stop, please stop…” 

His mind was torn apart into ragged, bloody shreds, and all he could do was scream into the void.

The soldier remembered.

He woke up in a hospital bed. He was hooked up to machines that beeped and clicked. The doctor stood over him and asked him a question. 

The soldier looked at him blankly. He couldn’t remember how to form the words.

He woke up in a hospital bed. He was hooked up to machines that beeped and clicked. The doctor stood over him and asked him a question.

The soldier looked up at him blankly. He opened his mouth to try to form words. Nothing came out. 

He woke up in a hospital bed. He was hooked up to machines that beeped and clicked. The doctor stood over him and asked him a question.

“Hurts,” the soldier said, and couldn’t remember if those were the right words. Couldn’t remember if he was supposed to say something else.

He woke up in a hospital bed. He was hooked up to machines that beeped and clicked. The doctor stood over him and asked him a question. The General was there, too. 

The soldier was supposed to sit up in the General’s presence. He was supposed to be respectful of his commanding officer. He was supposed to pay attention when the General spoke to him. But he couldn’t seem to lift his head off the pillow or focus his eyes on the General. He stared at the wall instead.

“He didn’t speak for two days,” the doctor said quietly. “I’m not yet sure of the extent of any possible damage.” Then the doctor made an expression, but the soldier wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Soldier?” The General sounded angry. “Look at me.”

The soldier didn’t know why the General was angry. His gaze drifted from the wall and settled on the General’s face. He still couldn’t seem to make himself sit up. 

“The Black Widow Romanova.” The General didn’t so much as blink. “Tell me what you know about her.”

The soldier stared back him blankly. He didn’t recognize the name. 

A smile crawled onto the General’s face. “You don’t know her.” His eyes flicked over to the doctor, who looked vaguely sick - why? - and then back to the soldier. “But she is not HYDRA. She’s not on our side, and your interests and loyalty lie solely with HYDRA.” His eyes narrowed. “With me. Above all, with me. Is that clear, Soldier?”

The soldier was supposed to speak when the General asked him a question. He opened his mouth. He murmured “yes, sir,” and went back to staring at the wall.

“Excellent.” The General smiled broadly and turned back to the doctor. “Excellent work, Doctor. I am very pleased.”

Bucky remembered.

He woke up bathed in cold sweat. His skin was damp and clammy, and his heart slammed against his chest, and he couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t breathe.

Steve was still curled around him, asleep. Outside, the sky was streaked in red and purple and gold, and Bucky couldn’t breathe, couldn’t settle his racing heart, couldn’t breathe.

He detangled himself from Steve and stumbled out of the room and into the bathroom, and his knees hit the cold tile, and he vomited up everything he had into the toilet, and then he vomited again, and again until he choked on stomach acid.

“Just bring it up.” Steve’s hands were on his shoulders suddenly, steadying him and gathering his hair back from his face. “It’s all right, Bucky, I’m here. It’s going to be all right.”

“It’s not-” Bucky started to say, and then gagged and spit up the last of the stomach acid. He remained there for several seconds, panting, hands clutching either side of the bowl and eyes blurring hot and wet. 

Steve held Bucky’s hair back with one hand, rubbing up and down between Bucky’s shoulderblades with the other. “Just breathe, Buck. I’m right here with you. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“No.” Bucky fell back on Steve. They ended up sitting on the bathroom floor, Steve’s back against the wall and Bucky between his legs, slumped against Steve’s chest. “No, it won’t be.”

“You’ve been doing so much better lately.” Steve reached both arms around Bucky and hugged him, gently enough not to disturb his still-pitching stomach, but firmly enough to hold him in place there against Steve’s chest. “And you’ll keep on getting better the longer you keep up the therapy. And I swear to God, I’m not going to let them hurt you ever again.”

“You keep saying that.” Bucky squeezed his burning eyes shut for a moment. “You keep saying that I’m doing so much better, but I don’t see it.” His breath hitched, and he held it for a moment until he felt steady. “I don’t see it at all.”

“Don’t you remember what you were like when you first showed up in my apartment in Washington?” Steve leaned his head forward, his chin coming to rest on Bucky’s shoulder. “You were an absolute mess. You hadn’t eaten or slept or bathed for days, and when I tried to hug you, you pulled a gun on me.” A single snort of laughter. “And now look at you. You’re telling me you don’t see improvement?”

Bucky turned his head slightly so that his face was in Steve’s neck. He could breathe in the scent of him that way, and it was… oddly calming. “That was different,” he murmured. “That doesn’t count. A lot of stuff has happened since.”

“And every week’s better than the one before.” Steve hugged Bucky tighter around the shoulders. “Even if the first few weeks don’t count. You hit rock bottom when Lukin kidnapped you again, and you’ve been working your way back up ever since. You’re better now than you’ve probably been since…” He trailed off suddenly, hesitating for a long moment before finishing his sentence. “Since what we just got through watching.”

Bucky didn’t know what else to say, but he did feel himself gradually relaxing against Steve until his breathing was calm and steady.

“Hey, Bucky.” The smile was clear in Steve’s voice. “I’ve got a great idea. If you get up and go get into our bed, I’ll order some food and put on one of the pictures from your Netflix queue. We can lay in bed and eat pizza and watch a picture.” He laughed. “Which sounds like the most decadent possible way to spend an evening.”

\---

An hour later, Steve and Bucky lay reclining in the big bed in Steve’s room with the sheets pulled up to waist level. A couple of pizza boxes sat open on their laps, and on the screen in front of them, Godzilla was attacking Manhattan. Bucky actually seemed to be enjoying himself, even smiling at a few of the picture’s sillier moments, and Steve was relieved to have found a way of pulling him back from the brink he’d been teetering on just a short time ago.

“We ought to watch the original,” Steve said around a mouthful of pizza as Matthew Broderick stumbled around falling debris. “It was on my list of iconic pictures to see, and I just never got around to it.”

Bucky popped a garlic knot into his mouth and washed it down with a swig of Coke. “You think the original tops this?”

“Well, it’s supposed to be iconic.” Steve chewed at his pizza. “But it was made in the 1950s, so the effects probably aren’t going to be as flashy as these.”

“No fancy… computer… things?” Bucky scowled and shook his head. “I don’t know from pictures.”

“They didn’t have fancy computer things in the 1950s, Buck.” Steve took a drink from his own soda. “At least not that they used for fancying up pictures. But it’s supposed to be a big important science fiction picture, and I figured you’d want to see it. So… we should see it.” He took another bite of pizza. “Sometime.”

“Add it to the queue.” Bucky lifted another slice from his personal box and took a big bite. Through a mouthful of peppers and meatballs, he added, “We’ll probably never get through the queue.”

“Probably not.” Steve smiled and stole a garlic knot from Bucky. “But that’s your own fault, for making your queue insanely long and unmanageable. For every picture you watch, you add five.”

Bucky shrugged. “It’s Netflix’s fault for recommending things to me. And they keep adding pictures. And serials.” 

Onscreen, Matthew Broderick ran away from several baby Godzillas, and Steve and Bucky fell silent. Until the climax of the final action sequence, anyway.

“No!” Steve sat bolt upright as the Brooklyn Bridge collapsed, entangling the creature in its cables. “Oh, come on. That’s the bridge! And now they’re… oh, that’s not right.” He slumped back against the headboard. “Yeah, I think I’d rather watch the old one.”

“It’s not the real bridge, Steve.” Bucky broke off half of their giant dessert cookie and passed it to him. “It’s just computer things.”

“I know it’s not the real bridge,” Steve replied indignantly as he crammed the cookie into his mouth. “It’s the principle of the thing. You don’t destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, just like you wouldn’t destroy the Pyramids or the Eiffel Tower. And besides, now they’re just shooting the poor thing to death with missiles when it was only trying to protect its children.” He chewed his huge mouthful in a pouting sort of way. “Is it bad when you root for the monster to win? Or at least get away at the end?”

“Yes, Steve.” Bucky ate his half of the cookie in three bites. “Yes, it’s bad when you root for the monster to win.”

“Well then.” Steve moodily polished off his soda. “I guess I’m bad.”

The picture ended shortly afterward, and as Steve collected the empty pizza boxes and brought them into the kitchen, he smiled to think that something as simple as an unhealthy dinner and a picture in bed could have brought Bucky back from where he’d been just a couple of hours ago. Just imagine how much better he’d be after a good night’s sleep, he thought as he headed back to the bedroom.

Bucky lay there in the bed, eyes open, staring up at the ceiling. When Steve crawled under the covers though, Bucky shifted over and wrapped himself around him.

“You doing all right, Bucky?” Steve wrapped his own arms around Bucky and hugged him. “It’s been a rough day, I know.”

“Yeah.” Bucky sighed. Traced a finger up and down Steve’s sternum. “I guess. I don’t know.” A beat, then, “No.”

Steve sighed. “Yeah, I figured. It was a horrible thing to have to watch.” He shivered slightly, though whether it was from the sickening memory of what Lukin had done to Bucky or the light touch of Bucky’s fingertip along his breastbone he couldn’t have said. “And everything before that, with Natasha…” He trailed off, unsure of how to even begin talking about that particular can of worms. To say nothing of unpacking everything it meant, and everything it was likely to change.

He hugged Bucky tighter as his mind whispered at him. Reminded him of what he was really worried about.

“I guess I just want to make sure you’re still going to be here in the morning.”

For a long moment, Bucky said nothing, and Steve lay there frozen. Waiting for his fears to be confirmed.

Finally Bucky murmured, “Where else would I be in the morning?”

Steve blew out a giant sigh of relief and hugged Bucky even more tightly - tightly enough to feel his ribs flex under the pressure. From the beginning, everything he’d done and everything he’d tried to do had been for the purpose of getting Bucky to stay with him. Whatever Bucky had been through, he’d told himself, they could fix - so long as Bucky was there. That was why he’d volunteered himself as Bucky’s legal guardian and offered his own house rather than the Tower as a place for Bucky to stay. That was why he’d physically held Bucky back from leaving during those first weeks, and had his living room destroyed because of it. That was why he’d woken up so early that first morning and checked on Bucky so many times that first night. Because Bucky needed to be there with him.

“I’m glad,” he mumbled into Bucky’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to leave. Not after you’ve come so far, and not when there’s still so much we can do to help you.”

Bucky sighed. “You’re going to see more awful things. It’s all going to be awful.” His fingers clenched at Steve’s side. “You know it’s true.”

Steve shook his head. “Whatever we see, I’m not going to let you see it alone.” He held Bucky against him, as if he could protect him against the fears in his own head just by holding him tightly. “I’m not going to let you face it alone, and I’m not going to let you deal with it alone. And as bad as it might get, I know there’s a whole world of good on the other side of it.”

“Maybe.” Still Bucky clung to Steve’s side. “Or maybe you’ll see things that are so horrible, you won’t want to see anymore.”

“No way.” Steve shook his head again, emphatically. “I’m not running out on you, Buck. No matter what there is to see, no matter how bad it gets, I’m going to be right there with you to help you get through it.”

Again Bucky was silent. His fingers trailed from Steve’s side to his chest, drawing indiscriminate patterns against the fabric of his shirt. Steve shivered again and shifted slightly, still holding Bucky close but giving him room to keep moving his hands. He felt more protective of Bucky in that moment than he ever had before, even at the darkest of times, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.

Finally, very quietly, Bucky murmured, “Why?” His hand stilled against Steve’s chest, palm flat against his breastbone. “Why do you keep doing this?”

“Doing what?” Steve lay still.

“You keep… You keep putting yourself out there.” Bucky exhaled slowly. “For me. Dragging me to therapists. Watching awful, horrible memories. Seeing how bad it actually was, and knowing it’s going to get worse. Just… dealing with all of this.” Another breath. “So… why?”

The answer came to him so easily - it was so obvious to him, and had been for so long - that he wondered why Bucky had even needed to ask the question. 

“Because I love you,” he replied simply. “I love you, Buck, and there’s not a thing in the world I wouldn’t do for you.”

And as he lay there in the dark, with the person who mattered more to him than anyone in the entire world ever had, he wondered why he hadn’t said it earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, feedback, and kudos are like author catnip. Throw some catnip my way!


	17. Breakthrough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Oh yeah?” Clint raised an eyebrow. “You even talked to Barnes about this good, best thing yet? Because you blew out of town pretty fast, didn’t you?”_
> 
> _“Are you kidding?” Natasha laughed out loud, shaking her head and looking up at the stars. “I wouldn’t even know how to begin. Why do you think I came out here?”_

**Barton family farm**  
**late June 2015**

“I should have been better prepared for it.” Natasha was halfway through her second glass of wine, not sipping it by any stretch of the imagination and feeling it. “But it hit me hard. Harder than I thought I could get hit anymore.”

She sat there in one of Clint’s Adirondack chairs - homemade in his own workshop out of boards she’d helped him salvage from a tumbledown shed on the property years ago - and let the warm June night breeze blow through her hair. Clint sat beside her in a second chair, his own glass of wine sitting on the wide flat armrest, his chin in his hand and his eyes on the stars.

The farm was home. It was her refuge; the place where everything made sense. The place she went to find shelter, to find sanctuary and regroup and muster the strength to face the world again. She hadn’t bothered signing the flying car back into the SHIELD motor pool after dropping Rogers and James off, and instead had headed right out to the farm. She’d pretty much fled headlong, not even remembering that she hadn’t packed a bag until she was over the Pennsylvania woods. Bedtime had come early that first evening, though sleep had been hard to come by and even harder to maintain. Things had reached out at her in the darkness of her mind, things that made her reach beneath her pillow for her Glock and then quickly yank her hand away out of fear that she might line up her sights on a nightmare and wake up to find herself sighting on one of the kids.

And now, on her second night, she sat outside with the sweet-smelling wind around her, wearing clothes borrowed from Laura and drinking a bottle of wine she remembered bringing there years ago, needing to talk to someone who could help her make sense of things that seemed designed to make as little sense as possible.

“I remembered it so clearly I could have drawn you a picture of every second of it.” She stared out at the trees with unfocused eyes, only half-seeing what she was facing. “But seeing it again, and watching him see it for the first time…”

She shook her head and took another drink. Hoped it would make the words come to her more easily. 

Clint glanced at her. “And so now you’re going to torture yourself by reliving it a third time?” He took a long pull from his wine glass. “Seems like a plan.”

“They ripped his mind to pieces because of me, Clint.” Her eyes never left the treeline, her thumb making slow and deliberate circles against the smooth surface of the glass. Pressing harder and harder, repeatedly and compulsively. “They sent him to Odessa just to see if he’d kill me. And when he didn’t, they fucked up his mind even worse.”

Clint frowned. Swirled the remains of the wine around in his glass. “From what you’ve said, it seems like it wasn’t really about you. Seems like you were really just an excuse to do what that guy - Lucky? Luckin?”

“Lukin,” Natasha confirmed, her thumb squeaking more and more audibly against the wine glass until she forced herself to put it down on the armrest. 

“Lukin.” Clint nodded. “You were just an excuse to do what Lukin probably wanted to do all along.” He polished off the last of his wine, then plucked the bottle from the ground, refilling his glass and topping off Natasha’s. 

“He hurt James because he hated the idea of him loving me.” She shivered, though there was no chill in the air. “He sent him to kill me to make sure the brainwashing worked. And when he didn’t kill me, Lukin tortured him again.” She felt a lump rise in her throat, reached for the wine, and took a large swallow to chase it down. “He loved me, and Lukin hated that so much that he ruined his mind over it.”

Clint’s mouth thinned into a line. “Like I said, sounds like this guy would’ve done it anyway. You were just the… the catamaran.” He frowned. “No, that’s a boat. Catamount?” His frown deepened. “Pretty sure that’s a ski resort.”

Natasha turned her head slowly to face him, a single eyebrow arched and her mouth twisted wryly over to one side as she watched him fight the latest in a lifelong series of battles against the English language. Of course she knew the word he was looking for, but she wasn’t going to give him any help. With any luck, he’d make her laugh and bring a spark of much-needed levity into her current mood.

He snapped his fingers suddenly. “Catalyst. You were just the catalyst, Nat.”

She smiled, and a single quiet laugh even came to the surface. Clint was good for her; she’d known that for a long time. He was family - the sort of big brother she would have wanted if a thing like that had ever been in the cards for her - and she could always count on him to be there for her with his unintentional humor and fumbling attempts at philosophy.

“That doesn’t change what happened.” She held her wine glass by the bowl, took another overly large sip. Clint would wind up having to carry her inside, she thought for a fleeting moment before deciding that she didn’t care. “It won’t make things any better for him, and it certainly isn’t going to change the way I feel about him.”

Clint blew out a long breath. “And here it comes.” 

She swiveled her head to eyeball him dead-on, her hair falling over one eye. “Here what comes?” The words came out a bit more defensively than she might have wanted, but Clint didn’t know. How could he know? How could he possibly understand?

Clint glanced at her, then very slowly and deliberately raised the wine glass to his lips and took a very long sip.

She waited.

He drained the glass empty, then reached to refill it, but only a few drops trickled out of the bottle. “Damn.” Abruptly he pushed off his chair and stood up. “Hang on. I need to fortify myself if we’re going to have this conversation.” 

It was pure Clint, she thought with a wry half-smile, to start to say something important and then do something ham-handed to build atmosphere and expectation. And she had to hand it to him this time - thanks maybe to the wine, or maybe to her overall mental state, it was working. She sat there waiting, wondering what he had on his mind and what he thought she had on hers, while he went to fetch another bottle of wine for them to demolish.

He came back a moment later with a new bottle, which he had already opened. “This one’s from a winery up in Ithaca, New York. That place is full of wineries. Throw a stone, hit a winery.” He sat down and poured himself a fresh glass of wine. “Anyway, this place, they make their wine with, like, jam. Raspberry jam. Stuff like that. Hurry up and finish your glass, and if you’re lucky, maybe I’ll let you try this jam wine.”

“Thanks.” She drained off the rest of her wine in a single long gulp, never breaking eye contact with him, and then held out the empty glass to him. “Now what was it you were about to say before the wine started calling your name?”

“Aw, Nat.” Clint sighed, but he did refill her glass. “Why can’t you go for a normal guy? Like, I dunno, an accountant or something? Someone normal?”

“You know why, Clint.” She rolled her eyes and looked away to the treeline again. Thought back to the time she’d stubbornly tried to give it all up - to put everything behind her and stop being the Black Widow, and to live an ordinary and mundane life with Matt Murdock. “I tried for normal once, remember? That didn’t work out so well.” She paused a moment, then turned to look at him again. “People like us don’t get to have normal, Clint. You know that.” A slight smirk. “Just look at who you married.”

“Yeah, well.” Clint glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting someone to be lurking behind them. “Don’t let her hear you. She’ll kick both our asses.” He looked back at Natasha. “And don’t change the subject. You know what I mean.”

“You mean, why couldn’t I have fallen in love with anybody besides the man who broke my heart and nearly killed me?” She took a drink of the raspberry wine, found it as sweet as fruit juice, and considered just downing the whole glass. Escaping into a comfortable wine-soaked haze for the rest of the night and refusing to acknowledge what had driven her out there to begin with. It would be so easy…

But she wasn’t that kind of woman.

“Maybe it’d be easier that way.” She shook her head and looked at her lap. “But I can’t help it, Clint. I love him.”

“Why, Nat?” Clint scowled into his glass. “Out of all the people you could have gone for, why him?”

“Because we’re cut from the same cloth.” She kept her eyes on her lap. “We both know what it’s like to be taken apart and put back together. To go through hell and never realize how horrible it was until afterwards.” She shook her head, remembering the awful images from James’ memory. Seeing the blatant falseness of what she’d convinced herself of after he’d shot her in Odessa. “And because the only reason I ever made myself believe I didn’t love him turned out to be a lie.”

Clint exhaled through his nose and scrubbed a hand over his face. “The guy eats fried cheese waffles straight from the box.”

She paused and turned to him with the wine glass halfway to her mouth, her eyebrows knitted and her expression one of exasperated disbelief. “Are you for real?”

“And he doesn’t share them.” Clint frowned into his wine, took a long pull on it, and went right back to staring into the glass. “I just want good things for you, Nat. We both do. Laura and me.”

“I know.” 

She settled back into her chair. Clint was Clint, after all, and despite the non sequiturs and general lack of eloquence, she knew he had only ever had her best interests in mind. That was why the farm was home to her, and that was why she loved Clint and Laura and the kids like her own family.

“I know,” she repeated, taking another drink. “But I think this is a good thing. Maybe the best thing.”

“Oh yeah?” Clint raised an eyebrow. “You even talked to Barnes about this good, best thing yet? Because you blew out of town pretty fast, didn’t you?”

“Are you kidding?” She laughed out loud, shaking her head and looking up at the stars. “I wouldn’t even know how to begin. Why do you think I came out here?”

Clint followed suit, tipping his head back and staring up at the night sky. “So this good, best thing is still a hypothetical, maybe thing, is what you’re saying?”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “Why don’t you tell me what _you’re_ saying?” She opened one eye and looked over at him. “Or what you’re suggesting?”

He frowned and went silent for a long moment. Finally, slowly, he said, “Guy’s a mess, Nat. I mean, I know what I was like after… after…” He shook his head. “And this guy? They’ve been messing with his head for seventy goddamn years. _Seventy._ I can’t even wrap my head around that.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “Longer than I’ve been alive, and I…”

“Not longer than I’ve been alive,” she muttered around the edge of her glass. She wondered absently if she’d ever find out just how old she was. That was another thing she and James had in common…

“I just don’t want you to get hurt by this guy.” Clint sighed. “Again.”

“I know.” 

She mentally berated herself for too much repetition of the same stupid phrase, then decided to blame it on the wine. And for good measure, she tossed off the rest of her glass. Setting it down on the armrest, she leaned back in her chair and looked up at the stars once more before letting her eyelids close and her awareness drift away.

\---

**SHIELD Headquarters**  
**Avengers Tower**  
**a day or so later**

“So…” Steve looked over at the workstation in Dr. Rodchenko’s laboratory again. “What are you doing here?”

“Elementary, my dear Captain.” Henry McCoy grinned toothily, his lion’s teeth bright white in the blue fur of his lion’s face. “There was biochemistry to be done, I’m not entirely unassociated with the field, time was of the essence, and I was bored.”

Steve looked over at Rodchenko, who shrugged, hands in the pockets of his lab coat. “You tell me I can have any resource I want. JARVIS tell me Dr. McCoy is good resource. And so here he is.”

“JARVIS was right about that.” Steve turned back to Rodchenko. “I’m not upset, just surprised. I didn’t expect you to call in another expert.”

“I know you are not upset, Captain.” An unreadable expression flitted across Rodchenko’s face. “I know upset. This is not it.” Another shrug. “But you say finding antidote is priority, and you want fast result, yes?”

“As fast as possible, yes.” Steve nodded, his mind racing. Now that Rodchenko had called in Hank, it probably wouldn’t be long at all before there was a major breakthrough. After all, two heads were better than one. Especially two of the smartest heads around. “And with the two of you-”

“Yes, yes, we make a rich and varied mosaic.” Hank gestured at Rodchenko with a large paw. “Anyway, I will admit to being thoroughly impressed by the Doctor’s work. He was the one who made the breakthrough, after all.”

“Breakthrough?” Steve’s heart leaped, and he looked from Hank to Rodchenko with an expectant look in his eye. “You mean you found the antidote?”

“Starter antidote,” Rodchenko said, right as Hank replied with, “A preliminary antidote to be sure, but it definitely qualifies as a breakthrough.”

“What do you mean, a starter antidote?” Steve turned his attention to Rodchenko, slightly puzzled. “Have you started testing it yet?”

“Testing it, yes. Of course.” From the counter of the workstation, Rodchenko picked up a dart gun that Steve hadn’t previously noticed. “On rabbits.”

“Which I have a sneaking suspicion is the real reason the Doctor sought out my help.” Hank grinned. “I’ve yet to see him actually hit one thing he’s aiming at.”

“Rabbits are fast,” Rodchenko muttered. “And I don’t have your mutant speed.”

“Or coordination,” Hank said cheerily.

“Yes.” Rodchenko snorted. “Or that.”

“All right, all right.” Steve was beginning to find it hard to keep up. “So you tested it on rabbits. And I’m guessing it works?” He looked from Rodchenko to Hank and back again, getting nods from them both. “All right. So why’s it still only a preliminary antidote? What else do you guys need?”

“Don’t like method.” Rodchenko held up the dart gun. “You can use this, shoot agent, and it stop poison.”

“You can also straight up stab them with a dart if you get in close enough,” Hank added. “If you want to get in close enough.”

“Yes.” Rodchenko nodded. “But you have to shoot them. Or stab them. So you must be fast, go through clothing.” 

“I don’t understand.” Steve hoped he didn’t look as baffled as he felt. “That was what I was thinking you’d come up with. The darts, I mean. Are you saying there’s a better way to deliver the antidote? A faster way, a more effective way?”

“I want faster, more effective way.” Rodchenko pushed the gun into Steve’s hands. “Because agent will maybe wear protective vest, protective clothing. So you must know right where to shoot, and if you miss, reload gun and try again.”

“Or stab them.” Hank grinned. “There’s always that.”

“There is always that.” Rodchenko slid his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. “But I will find something faster. Better. This is starter antidote.”

“All right,” Steve replied, nodding. “Starter antidote it is. But if it’ll work on a man as well as it’ll work on a rabbit, then I’ll want to introduce it into the field as soon as you can make enough of it for everyone to carry some.”

“It should take rest of science team five days to… _sintezirovat_ …” Rodchenko frowned. “I don’t know this word. Maybe ‘make’?”

“Synthesize?” Hank suggested.

“Yes, that.” Rodchenko nodded. “Five days to do that. Maybe three if they work faster. And we have maybe ten sample left, and you can use them. Maybe have field test.”

“Incredible.” Steve broke into a smile and extended a hand to Rodchenko, who hesitated a moment and then grasped it briefly. “Thank you, Doctor. I can’t even tell you how helpful this is going to be.” Releasing Rodchenko’s hand, he turned to Hank, who stood there looking self-satisfied enough for both himself and Rodchenko. “Hank, I’m happy for your contribution as always.”

“And I for yours,” Hank said with a grin. “Speaking of which, may I be paid entirely in Bicentennial quarters this time?”

And as Steve collected the precious few samples of the antidote and headed out the door, he could have sworn he heard Hank murmur to Rodchenko, “What did I tell you? Science, bitches.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Natasha and Matt Murdock did date in the comics, but they broke up in like... 1975. LOL, comics. In the MCU context, I like to imagine Natasha got involved with him a few years ago, when she was trying to prove to herself how that she could be a normal, regular person, in a normal, regular relationship. Didn't work for either party.
> 
> Which is kind of what Joss Whedon was going for in AoU, only with Bruce Banner as the Matt Murdock stand-in. Whether or not that angle worked is a matter of controversial debate. 
> 
> Feed the author! NOM NOM NOM.


	18. Multitasking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Why?” He swallowed. “Why didn’t you say something?”_
> 
> _“Do you even have to ask that?” She let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. God, she’d had to hold everything back for so long, and now that all the barriers were down, she found herself still hesitating to take the fateful plunge._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If two Russian characters are speaking to each other, assume they are speaking Russian. No ["language brackets"] needed.

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**early July 2015**

A few days passed, and Natasha didn’t come around with food or call or simply show up and let herself into the house, the way she sometimes did.

Bucky wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

He took out his phone once or twice, or maybe three times, and stared at her name on the screen, but he couldn’t bring himself to call.

What would he even say if she answered?

And so he said nothing, and neither did she, and maybe that was some kind of communication in itself. 

He had no answer for that.

On the third day, he saw her on the bridge of the Helicarrier, but the rest of the team was there too. Stark’s algorithm had brought up a handful of names, and apparently a SHIELD scientist had made an antidote to the HYDRA poison, which meant…

“Sounds like things are finally coming together,” Wilson said, as everyone in the group received a dart gun loaded with an ampoule of the antidote.

Bucky and Natasha were assigned to take in a mid-level businessman in Nice, France. Probably he couldn’t tell them a thing about the General, but they had the antidote to shoot him with if he tried anything.

So there was that.

It was a standard in-and-out procedure. Low-level security force, sloppily guarded compound. Nothing that either of them couldn’t walk through, and so he found himself talking to her while taking down a knot of poorly trained guards.

“You disappeared.” He tried not to sound critical as he kicked one guard into another, both of them slamming into the wall like ragdolls. “I didn’t expect that.”

“I had a lot on my mind.” Natasha’s foot flicked expertly into the crotch of the man in front of her, and her other knee slammed into his nose as he doubled over on himself. “But I never disappear forever.”

He wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that. He muttered, “That’s good,” right as he finished the last of the guards.

A half dozen more of them showed up after that, and then another group of them once Bucky and Natasha had gotten inside the compound, and a third group once they had gone up a few floors.

“It’s like a goddamn clown car,” he said between rapid bursts of gunfire. “And I wish you had said something.”

He wasn’t sure why he had said that to her at all, but he couldn’t take it back. 

“Hang on.” Natasha’s voice came out slightly strained as she twisted one of them down to the ground with her signature flying headscissors maneuver, then sent another two crumpling to their knees with well-placed stinger discs. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to be having this conversation.”

Bucky scowled. “I can multitask.”

Not too long after that, they broke into the target’s panic room, and right as the target stood up from where he was crouched in the corner and shouted “Hail HYDRA!” Bucky shot him in the neck with the antidote.

The target crumpled to the ground, twitching and unconscious, but alive.

“I’ll be damned.” Natasha came up beside him, one eyebrow raised and her hands on her hips. “It worked.”

They brought the target back to the Helicarrier. Went through their debriefings. Bucky signed the larger weapons back into the armory. Natasha was gone by the time everything was completed.

Apparently Natasha couldn’t multitask. 

Maybe she didn’t want to have the conversation at all.

The conversation that he didn’t know how to have anyway.

And yet he found himself muttering some stupid excuse to Steve - he couldn’t even remember what he said - and then taking the Quinjet that was headed back to Avengers Tower with Sam and Sharon. 

Natasha wasn’t even on that Quinjet, even though she lived at Avengers Tower too. That’s how quickly she had wanted to get off the Helicarrier and away from the conversation, so whatever Bucky was about to do, it was probably a stupid decision.

And he was doing it anyway.

\---

Maybe leaving the Helicarrier while James had been busy hadn’t been an example of her at her best, Natasha thought as she stood by her window looking out at the neon-lit Manhattan nightscape. She hadn’t changed out of her bodysuit yet or even taken off her Widow’s Bites, she’d been in that much of a hurry to get away. But it hadn’t felt like the right time or place to have the conversation she knew they were going to end up having. In all honesty, she’d have preferred to talk to him somewhere private. Somewhere she knew they wouldn’t be interrupted or overheard. Somewhere like…

“Ms. Romanoff?” JARVIS’ voice somehow managed to startle her nearly every time, coming out of nowhere as it tended to do. “Sergeant Barnes is here to see you. Shall I let him in?”

She felt her heart rise into her throat at the idea of him coming to see her - maybe even waiting right outside her door - and still not knowing how to talk to him about what they so desperately needed to talk about. It couldn’t be put off any longer, though, and if she were going to be honest with herself (which she always was) there didn’t seem to be much point in continuing to put it off. James remembered it all now, and the time for holding back was over.

“Sure,” she said, her voice remarkably steady despite the fluttering of her heart. “And then give us a bit of space, would you?”

“Certainly.”

And then the door opened, and there he was.

He hadn’t gotten changed either - his weapons were still strapped in place, even - and she was reminded all over again of just how alike the two of them really were. And how much they’d meant to one another once, in a time that seemed a lot longer ago than it actually had been.

“Hi,” she said, not meaning to smile at him but feeling the nervous quirking of her mouth anyway.

“So…” He hesitated. Licked his lips. “You can’t multitask.”

She raised an eyebrow and felt her smile widen. “There’s a difference between ‘can’t’ and ‘didn’t’.” She folded her arms and leaned against the door frame. “But some things are too important to multitask.”

“Are you…” His hands hung loose at his sides, but he clenched his fingers just then. “Can I come in?”

She looked down at his hands, then back up into his eyes. Slowly, she unfolded her arms and extended a hand to him, bringing him inside wordlessly. And when the door was shut behind him, she let out a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Why don’t you sit down,” she offered, gesturing at the sofa she herself had disdained upon coming home. “Make yourself comfortable.”

He didn’t sit down. Instead he ended up by the windows.

“It’s fine. I don’t need to sit.” He pushed a hand through his hair and didn’t look at her. “I’ve been sitting all day.”

“No you haven’t.” She smirked and let her hands come to rest on her hips. James was very predictable, trying to act as though he was invulnerable to the things he was feeling right then, but she loved him anyway. In fact, his demeanor was almost definitely contributing to the way she felt about him. “We were on a mission not two hours ago. You weren’t sitting through that.”

“Well, I’ve been sitting since.” He still didn’t look at her. “Too much sitting.” He licked his lips again. “I’m okay where I am.”

She moved closer to him, the look on her face shifting back and forth from playful smirk to nervous and genuine smile. Her brief attempt at banishing the tension with humor clearly hadn’t worked, and it looked like there was going to be no way forward except to talk about what had been revealed during the latest memory walk.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this nervous.

“I’m okay with where you are, too,” she said, putting a hand gently on his metal forearm. “I’m glad you came.”

“Are you?” He was breathing a bit too heavily, and still he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “You took off pretty quickly.”

The confusion her leaving had caused him was clear in his posture, and it hurt her to see it. She brought her other hand up and rested it against his cheek, her heart thumping and her lungs not seeming to be able to take in enough air.

“I didn’t think it was the right time or place, James.” She tried to turn his face gently towards her, to get him to look into her eyes the way she was trying to look into his. “Not for what we need to talk about. Not while everyone else was there.” She offered a shaky smile. “But now it’s just the two of us.”

“Why? No one else can understand us anyway. No one speaks...” He looked at her, and the rest of his sentence seemed to unravel somewhere. He was panting now, and he bit down hard on his lip.

She looked into his eyes, saw confusion and uncertainty and nervousness - the same things she was feeling. And at that moment, she wondered why. Why had it ever needed to be that way? Why, when they’d meant so much to one another? When they’d kept finding each other, coming back to each other time and time again since the beginning of the Cold War, no matter what kind of ghastly things had been done to try to keep them apart? Why, when they’d finally found each other again and everything had been laid bare, should they be forced to endure such uncertainty?

Natasha knew what she wanted. She’d known for a long time. And James?

Well, that was the part that made her nervous. Because what if he didn’t want the same thing she wanted? What if-

No. She wasn’t going to play that little game. ‘What if’ had never changed a thing for her. Unlike getting up and going after what she wanted.

“It’s not for anyone else, James.” She pulled herself closer to him, her body trembling as she looked into his eyes. “It’s not about them. It’s about us.”

His hands were still clenched at his sides, trembling slightly. Or maybe his whole body was trembling with the effort to…

To what?

“Why?” He swallowed. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Do you even have to ask that?” She let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. God, she’d had to hold everything back for so long, and now that all the barriers were down, she found herself still hesitating to take the fateful plunge.

But a voice in her head that sounded strangely like Rogers chimed in.

_Do it, Natasha. If you don’t take the chance while you’ve got it, you may wind up regretting it forever. And forever is a long damn time._

“Yes, I have to ask that.” He was definitely trembling. Straining, perhaps, to hold himself back from something. “Everyone knows more about my life than I do, and you… you…” He licked his lips once again and broke her gaze, eyes darting everywhere but to her. “You know more than most, and I don’t know… I don’t know how…”

Again she pressed her hand against his cheek, turning his face insistently back towards her. Every part of her mind cautioned her, told her she was moving too fast and letting it happen too soon - every part but one. And that one part of her mind, the part that spoke in Rogers’ voice and with Rogers’ words, told her she’d already waited far too long. That she’d be a fool to wait even a single split second longer, and that some kinds of lost time could never be made up for.

She’d never been an impulsive person. Everything she’d ever done had been calculated, logical, and planned, and she’d always been careful to keep her true feelings carefully hidden behind any number of facades. And what had that ever done for her, besides prolong a life that had been brutal and terrifying and completely senseless?

So she listened to Rogers. She threw caution to the wind for what may have been the first time in her life, and she forced the thought of any consequences out of her mind. She loved him, damn it - loved him with everything she had - and she’d held back for long enough.

Both her hands cupped his face. She closed her eyes, hesitated a moment, and then flung herself against him and kissed him with every ounce of desperate energy she could muster.

He staggered backward, not from loss of balance, but maybe from the shock of it, and then his back was pressed against the window. One hand went to her waist, the other to the back of her head, and he pulled her against him impossibly closer.

Maybe it was too soon, but she didn’t care anymore.

“James,” she managed to murmur past the crushing of her lips against his, amidst the desperate scrabbling of her hands to find purchase on him somewhere. Some kind of primal instinct had grabbed hold of her, and she felt the overwhelming need to hold him as close as possible. To mold herself to him and entwine herself with him and never let go again. “Oh, James…”

“We can stop,” he muttered around her mouth, but his hands tightened on her waist and neck and his hips ground into her and his lips were against hers with the same eager desperation. “If you want… if…”

“No!” The word came out more forcefully than she thought it might, startling even her. Her fingers laced themselves into his hair, and she broke the kiss long enough to look him in the eyes. “I want this. I want _you_.” Her eyes glinted dangerously, and the corners of her mouth quirked in a somewhat predatory smile. “Don’t you dare stop.”

She was up on him in an instant, her strong legs scissoring around his waist and locking firmly onto him. Her whole torso was pressed against him, and she kissed him hungrily, pulling his face greedily to hers with the leverage of her hands wound into his hair. And her mind was soaring, elated with the idea that they were finally doing this, that she’d found him again and that this time could be different.

His hands were instantly on her ass, one hand cupping each cheek, and he pushed off from the window and staggered in the vague direction of the bedroom. Maybe.

“No plants,” he muttered against her neck, before his lips were once again pressing desperately against hers. “No plants this time. Nothing to break.”

“I can’t keep plants alive.” Her hands reached down to his waist and thighs, twisting awkwardly to reach but not wanting to let go of him with her legs. Fumbled at the straps that held his weapon harness on, undoing the buckles with clumsy fingers and hearing the clunk and jingle as they fell to the floor - pistols, knives, and all. “Just as well.”

She ended up with her back against the wall to the kitchen, nowhere near the bedroom, her legs scissored around his waist and his hands still clenching her ass. 

“You never decorated.” His lips were on her mouth, her chin, her neck. His hands came up trembling, awkwardly fumbled with the zipper to her jumpsuit, dragging it down as far as he could get it. “Just as well.”

She wriggled her shoulders as best she could, having to let go of his hair first with one hand and then with the other, but she let him peel the jumpsuit off of her shoulders and down her arms. The Widow’s Bites kept the sleeves from coming all the way off, though, and so she had to hurriedly unstrap them and toss them aside, careless of where they might fall. One of them thudded quietly to the carpet, the other clattered loudly onto an end table. She, meanwhile, was mashing her lips against every part of him she could reach while grinding her hips against him. With her legs locked around his waist, it created a wonderful burning deep inside her that she hadn’t felt in what seemed like ages.

“Don’t need decorations,” she murmured into his neck as she yanked at the zipper on the front of his Neoprene jacket. “Don’t want them. I just want you.”

He got the zipper nearly down to her waist, then paused. “You have a belt.” He scrabbled gracelessly at the buckle until the belt dropped to the floor, only to be met with... “You have two belts. Why do you need two belts?”

“One to hold my outfit together,” she smirked as she pulled off her fingerless gloves, “and one to hold my gear.” 

“Let’s get rid of the gear,” he muttered, fingers working quickly over the second belt, which included a harness on one thigh and two harnesses on the other. “This is just unreasonable.” He rolled his eyes, and with a final tug, the whole contraption came away. He tossed it carelessly behind him, and it landed somewhere near the open door to the bedroom.

“Unreasonable?” She pulled the jacket off of him and tossed it aside, tugged at the form-fitting baselayer shirt he wore underneath and started peeling that off as well. “You’re one to talk. Wearing all these unreasonable layers.”

She tossed the shirt aside and pressed her hands against his bare chest for the first time in years. Let her fingertips caress the solid, sculpted muscle and roam all the way to the twisted maze of scar tissue where his flesh gave way to carbonadium. 

He sucked in his breath and went still, waiting to see what she would do. She smiled at him, a small and somewhat nervous smile - she still couldn’t entirely believe it was happening, after all - and continued touching him. It felt daring and familiar and _right,_ and her mind wasn’t forming coherent thoughts anymore, and how could she say what was on her mind if she couldn’t catch up to it herself?

She settled for kissing him hungrily again. So hungrily that she lunged forward against him, pushing off the wall and unbalancing him, and he staggered across the living room and finally - _finally_ \- through the door of the bedroom.

He plowed them right into the dresser, half of the toiletries clattering to the floor. Natasha laughed in breathless astonishment, just in time for James to plunk her right on top of the dresser - the rest of the toiletries skidding off the side and onto the rug - and begin undoing the clasps to her boots.

“Take them off,” she whispered huskily as she wound her fingers into his hair and kissed desperately at every part of him she could reach. And when James had undone her right boot, she pulled her leg back to yank her foot out of it. She wanted the boots gone, wanted everything the both of them were wearing gone, wanted to feel him against her the way she’d wanted for far too long.

He tossed the one boot behind him, and it went sailing through the door to the ensuite bathroom. The other boot he tugged off and tossed into a corner of the bedroom. He took a second to yank his fingerless gloves off with his teeth, spitting them one after the other to the floor somewhere. 

She couldn’t hold back. With the boots gone, there was nothing stopping her from peeling her bodysuit the rest of the way off. The top of it had been hanging down around her waist, and she just wanted the damn thing gone. So, with hurried and desperate movements, she started yanking it down over her hips and thighs. James caught on quickly enough, peeling it down the rest of the way and tossing the whole thing aside.

She locked eyes with him, her mouth nervously twitching at the corners in what she supposed was a smile, and - before she could lose her nerve - pulled off her sports bra with a single smooth gesture and tossed it aside. The sudden cool air against the bare undersides of her breasts raised goosebumps on her arms and made her nipples peaky. Or was it the anticipation of what was about to happen that did that?

“There you are,” he said quietly, with something like awe in his voice. “Natalia…”

She gave him a sweltering half-smile in return, coupled with an arched eyebrow, before launching herself off of the top of the dresser at him. She landed in a sitting position astride his shoulders, her legs hooked around his neck and his face between her thighs. And she had just one split second to revel in the feeling of his startled breath hot against her core before she twisted back into her signature flying headscissors maneuver and dropped him neatly to the bed. She pounced on him as soon as he landed, straddling his waist and smiling triumphantly down at him. And her hands immediately went to the button and zipper on his pants.

“You…” He was breathless. Dazed. A small smile flitted across his mouth, and she realized it had been forever since she had last seen him smile. Far too long. “You always did impress me…”

“Wait till I get going.” She undid his pants with hands that shook with nervous anticipation and, grabbing both hands full of his waistband, proceeded to yank them down.

Down past his knees, at least, where she was reminded that he still had his boots on. But between scrabbling at the knots in his laces and yanking savagely at the boots themselves, she managed to get them off. And then his pants followed, and then she was slithering back up against him and grinding her hips against his substantial erection - those boxer briefs would have to go soon - and kissing him desperately, greedily, and she couldn’t get enough of him…

And it seemed he couldn’t get enough of her either. 

His fingers slid underneath the waistband of her underwear, hands clutching and kneading at the bare flesh of her ass as she ground herself maddeningly against him. He grabbed a handful of her underwear suddenly and yanked, the thin fabric tearing into shreds in his hand.

“Sorry,” he muttered against her mouth, and didn’t sound at all contrite. “It was in the way.” 

“So’s this,” she breathed, aroused beyond belief. She grabbed the waistband of his boxer briefs and hauled them down quickly enough to make the elastic snap loudly. 

Her mind whirled with thoughts she couldn’t follow, a haze of need clouding every last bit of logic she had. She was completely naked, and so was he, and this was where they both needed to be, and then she was wrapping her legs around him again and reaching down to position him and looking into his eyes at the same time, and when he rocked his hips and slid into her, she let out a long, low sound of pure satisfaction.

“Oh, James…!”

She laced her fingers into his hair and locked her legs around his waist and pulled him into her with everything she had. She clutched at him as he moved against her and inside her, both of them gasping and panting with their exertion. They rolled over and over, neither of them wanting to let the other stay on top for too long. The reading lamp crashed to the floor at a glancing blow from her calf, and she felt the world dropping away beneath her as she closed her eyes and whispered his name over and over again until the final, shattering wave crashed over them both and they lay still.

\---

Bucky awoke to a face full of red hair and no confusion whatsoever about where he was or who he was with.

Which was nice.

Natasha was still asleep and wrapped around him in such a way that would make sitting up difficult, but even the most cursory glance around the bedroom showed him how trashed the place was. They weren’t even sleeping on pillows; those had ended across the room somewhere. The blanket trailed over the edge of the mattress, most of it puddling into the floor, and it appeared they had somehow knocked the full length mirror off the wall, though at least it wasn’t broken.

He wasn’t sure when they had done that, but they had kept going at it for most of the night until they finally collapsed in exhaustion right as the sun was coming up. So it could have happened at any point, really.

It had been a good night.

He ran a hand through Natasha’s hair, enjoying the way her red tresses contrasted bright against his metal fingers, and he kept at that for a bit until Natasha gradually woke up.

“Morning,” he murmured, planting a kiss against the top of her head.

A look came over her face as she awoke, something that looked like confused apprehension, but it only lasted a moment. And in its wake came exhausted relief.

“Morning,” she replied with a sleepy half-smile, leaning her head gently into the touch of his metal fingers. “I almost forgot where we were. We didn’t used to be able to do this.”

“Wake up in the same bed in the morning?” Vague frustration hummed at the back of his mind - he still had so much to find out about his past, still so many memories to discover - but he was in a good place right then, and he wanted to enjoy it for as long as he could. “How many times has this happened with us? It wasn’t just... “ He licked his lips, considered his words carefully. “It wasn’t just what we saw last time, was it?”

“No,” she said, the smile fading a bit. She didn’t pull away from him, though, and in a moment, she looked up at him and smiled more warmly. “We’ve been finding our way to each other for more than fifty years.”

It took him a long moment to find a reply to that.

“So when you said we sparred in front of the Politburo in 1957…” He said the words very slowly. Thoughts and ideas were coming to him now, and he needed time to digest it all. “Had we been together then?”

“Oh yes.” She smiled at him, the faraway look in her eyes telling him she was playing it out in her mind. “And I had a hell of a time trying to act like sparring with you wasn’t foreplay.”

A frown flitted across his mouth. “I went behind Comrade General Karpov’s back then? He couldn’t have known about us?” He shifted slightly so he could look at her. “Did he?”

“He found out eventually.” Her smile slipped again. “We weren’t as careful as we thought we were being. I guess we never were.”

Several more thoughts crashed through his head right then, each one more provocative than the last, but nothing was more provocative than a naked Natasha entangled in bed with him. He would have a lot of time to unpack and think about his past, but who knew when they would end up where they were again?

“So…” His fingers skated down her spine, lower and lower, until he had a palm full of firm asscheek in one hand. “I’m supposed to go to therapy in two hours, but I think I can skip it today.”

If it meant staying in bed with her for a bit longer, he could skip anything.

“Oh no.” She propped herself up on one elbow, lifting her upper body off of his for the first time, and fixed him with an even look. “You’re not skipping out on that. Not today, not any day.” She cracked a smile. “But we’ve still got two hours.”

“But…” She wasn’t going to be moved; he could already see that, but for some reason, it didn’t stop him from trying anyway. “Today is a good day. Last night was a good night. I don’t need therapy today.”

“Yes, you do.” She reached over and picked up her phone from the nightstand - the one they hadn’t kicked over last night. “In fact, I’m going to text Steve right now and let him know that I’m bringing you there myself.”

Natasha had texted Steve last night as well, to let him know that Bucky was spending the night and he shouldn’t worry. 

He watched as she finished off her text and tossed the phone back on the nightstand. And even though that text had pretty much sealed the deal as far as going to therapy was concerned, he couldn’t help but try again. Because going to therapy meant getting out of bed, and why would he want to do that?

“I can’t go to therapy today.” Over her raised eyebrow, he added, “I don’t have any civilian clothing here.”

“But Steve does.” She smirked in what looked like triumph. “He keeps a suite here just in case, with a few changes of clothes and everything. He won’t mind if I borrow some clothes for you.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Nice try, James.”

“Fine,” he muttered, because there was no arguing with her. Not really. “But we shouldn’t waste the time we have.”

“Of course not.” Her smirk turned into the kind of smile that hinted at things to come. She slithered backwards on the bed, sliding off of him. “So you just wait right there…” 

Her eyes suddenly went wide, then rolled back in her head as she collapsed to the floor like a doll dropped from a child’s hand.

“Natasha?” He bolted upright in bed and reached for her, right as she groaned and opened her eyes. Beneath her heel was one of her stinger discs, carelessly dropped to the floor at some point last night.

“Did I pee myself?” Her eyelids fluttered open, and she grimaced slightly. “I feel like I might’ve peed myself.”

Bucky licked his lips. Hesitated. “Yeah. Maybe. Just a little.”

“Great.” The grimace intensified, and she struggled up into a sitting position. “Well, then, I’m going to go get cleaned off.” She cautiously looked around before shifting her position any further, then stood up. “You make sure there are no more dangerous things for us to step on.” She shook her head. “At least it wasn’t a grenade or something.”

“No, Coulson makes me sign those back in.” 

Natasha disappeared into the bathroom, and Bucky got out of bed, fished around for his boxer briefs, and pulled them on. Then he spent a moment collecting the various weapons he found discarded carelessly around the apartment.

Maybe they did need to be more careful about that.

It was a strange, though not unwelcome, sensation, being in Natasha’s apartment as sunlight filtered through the windows of the living room. From what he remembered, and from what she had said, they had never been allowed that before. Never been allowed a night with each other that wasn’t followed by one of them sneaking out before dawn.

It was nice.

“Who told you you could get dressed?” Her arms went around him from behind, a smile in her voice, her bare front pressing up against his bare back.

That was nice too.

“This hardly counts.” He dropped the collection of holsters and weapons on the coffee table and shifted around to face her. “But we only have two hours. Unless you let me skip therapy so we can stay in.”

“Nice try.” She smirked, her arms going around his neck and her body pressing against his. “You’re going to therapy, and that’s that. But two hours is a long time.” Her eyes sparkled as they met his. “If you know how to use it.”

They knew exactly how to use it, and Natasha even promised they could go out for a late breakfast after therapy and that Bucky could choose the restaurant. Two hours later, Bucky was sitting in Dr. Levitt’s office, wearing the sweatpants and hooded sweatshirt Natasha had borrowed from Steve’s suite, and having what felt like a surprisingly productive conversation.

And not too long after that, he and Natasha sat down in a booth at a promising looking waffle house - Batter Than Bacon.

It wasn’t a bad way to start the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm. Well, this is quite the turn of events, isn't it? But where's Steve, I wonder? *glances up at the tags* Pretty sure I see his name up there. Which means things aren't really resolved yet, are they...?
> 
> Well, anyway, feed the author!


	19. Fireworks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky stared at the sketch pad in silence for what felt like a worrisome amount of time, and the longer it went on, the more Steve felt the irrational impulse to snatch the stupid thing back and run out of the room to hide._
> 
> _What was he, eight years old again? He felt ridiculous. But he couldn’t deny everything else he was feeling either._

**Steve’s apartment, Red Hook**  
**July 2015**

On the second morning he woke up alone, Steve stood in front of the stove cooking breakfast for one and feeling decidedly out-of-sorts. 

It hadn’t been too odd the first night, going to sleep without Bucky there, because at least he’d known where Bucky was. Though something had tugged at him uncomfortably as he lay there in bed. Everything that had happened between Bucky and Natasha had seemed so long ago, and he’d been able to put it mostly out of his mind as long as Bucky had been there with him. Sleeping there beside him every night, his presence solid and reassuring beside him in the dark. But that night, the bed had felt big and empty.

Lonely.

Waking up the first morning had been strange. It had taken him a moment to override his instincts and remember why Bucky wasn’t there; he’d very nearly jumped out of bed in panic to search the house. But when he went into the kitchen and started cooking breakfast, the first wave of discomfort hit him upon realizing that breakfast was going to be much smaller that morning. And the feeling only became more pronounced as the day went on.

He’d become so used to having Bucky there with him, even passively, that his absence was like a huge hole in the world. And when he let his guard down and began to think about what Bucky and Natasha were probably up to, he found himself beginning to feel unreasonably upset.

Why?

It wasn’t as though he had anything against Natasha. She was one of the closest friends he’d made since he’d been back, and not just because of what he’d pointed out about shared life experience. He cared about her deeply, and he wanted nothing but good things for her - she’d seen enough bad things to last a lifetime. And yet, something about the idea of Bucky lying in bed next to her instead of next to him brought a surge of unexpected possessiveness to Steve that he wasn’t prepared to feel.

By mid-morning of the second day, he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it through a third night. The thought of lying there alone in that huge bed with Bucky off somewhere else brought an ache to his heart and a twisting sensation to his stomach. And the thought that it might be permanent - that Bucky might come back only to gather up his few possessions and then resettle himself with Natasha instead - well, that made him feel sick.

He dragged himself away from the breakfast table eventually, ordering himself out the door and onto a jogging route that took him around the neighborhood a few times. Except that every time he passed one of the trendy waffle or pancake houses that Bucky loved so much, it was like salt on the wound. He found himself turning down streets abruptly to avoid passing by certain places, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from thinking about Bucky. He tried running faster - pouring all his effort into the exercise in the hope of shutting off his mind and preventing him from brooding - but it was no good. The harder he pushed himself, it seemed, the more his mind latched onto the thought of why he was pushing so hard. And eventually, pouring sweat and no better off in his mind, he had to stop running.

Back home, showered and wearing clean clothes, he sat down on the couch and took out his sketch pad. It had been a long time since he’d drawn anything, but in the past, it had always been his way of dealing with anger and sadness. He’d hunker down in his tiny room in the tenement building, his ma in the other room, and draw until there was nothing else in the world except the scratching of his pencil and the things he’d created on paper with it. 

This time, it was Bucky that appeared as he scribbled. Bucky, his hair shorter and his face clean-shaven, his clothing neat and a good deal fancier than he’d been wearing lately. Bucky, the old smile back on his face and a brightness in his eyes that Steve could see in his mind’s eye as though it had been only yesterday. Bucky, the ribbed and plated texture of his left hand and forearm contrasting with the smoothness of his right, but both arms open and ready for an embrace.

Bucky, as he was going to be in the future.

The sketch continued to take shape and time slipped away from him. He was working on shading the contours when the front door opened and Bucky walked in. He was wearing what appeared to be a pair of Steve’s old sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt and was carrying a heavy duffle bag.

And he hesitated at the door for some reason.

“Hey,” he finally said, but didn’t move from his spot, duffle bag still in hand. 

Steve looked up, startled. “Hey.” He faltered for a moment, unsure of what to do, and then set aside the sketch pad and got to his feet. “You’re back.”

“Yeah.” Bucky set the duffle bag on the floor. Licked his lips. His eyes darted from Steve to the sketch pad and back again. “Are you drawing?”

“Sort of.” Steve wished he’d closed the pad before putting it aside; he didn’t know how well Bucky would respond to seeing an idealized version of himself. Steve was actually beginning to feel a bit self-conscious for having drawn it. “I’m a bit out of practice.”

Another moment of hesitation, but then Bucky moved into the living room. “Can I see?”

Steve held back for a second, feeling slightly embarrassed, before pulling himself together and telling himself it was ridiculous to feel that way. He had no reason to, did he? After all, what was the worst reaction Bucky could have?

“Sure,” he said, picking up the sketch pad and handing it to Bucky. “Knock yourself out.”

Bucky stared at the sketch pad in silence for what felt like a worrisome amount of time, and the longer it went on, the more Steve felt the irrational impulse to snatch the stupid thing back and run out of the room to hide.

What was he, eight years old again? He felt ridiculous. But he couldn’t deny everything else he was feeling either.

And then Bucky did speak, and there was something like awe in his voice. “That’s me,” he said quietly. He didn’t look up from the pad. “How’d you do that without me even being here?”

“After drawing you so many times?” Steve couldn’t help the smile that came to his face and into his voice. “I used to use you for a model when I was practicing how to draw. I think I drew you more often than I ever drew anything else.” He chuckled, a single puff of air through his nose. “Except maybe the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“But it’s…” Bucky traced lightly over the sketch. “It’s really good. And I look…” 

Steve waited, half expectantly, half afraid.

“I don’t know.” Bucky shrugged, fingers lingering on the drawing as if he were memorizing every line. “Better.”

“Do you like it?” was the only thing Steve could come up with to say. And he found himself hoping with everything he had that the answer was yes.

“Yeah. I do.” A beat, then, “I haven’t seen any other pictures of me, except for what was in the newspapers and in the museum. And this is… this is nicer than all of those.”

“Oh.” Steve felt suddenly awkward and lost for words, tongue-tied at such simple and heartfelt praise. He smiled, looking first down at his hands, then back up at Bucky. “You, uh…” He cleared his throat, trying to push down the sudden maudlin lump that had risen into it and not doing a very good job. “You can have it. If you want.”

“When it’s finished.” Bucky looked up from the pad finally, something like a small smile flickering across his face. “When it’s finished, I’d like it.”

“Deal.” Steve smiled broadly as he took the pad back from Bucky, putting a hand on Bucky’s arm as he did so. “Hey, did you eat yet?”

“I could eat,” Bucky said without any hesitation. 

“You could always eat.” Steve chuckled as he tossed the sketch pad on the coffee table. “That’s been the story of your whole life.”

Bucky scowled. “Well, I could eat now. Thai or pizza?”

“Thai,” Steve replied, raising an eyebrow at the scowl. “We had pizza last time.”

“Fine. You order.” Bucky jerked a thumb in the direction of the kitchen, presumably so Steve could go and get the menu. “I choose the picture.”

The passage of a couple of hours found them sitting side-by-side on the sofa, an enormous spread of Thai food laid out in front of them on the coffee table and the sequel to a pretty genuinely scary picture called _Alien_ on the television screen. Despite the fact that science fiction and horror pictures generally weren’t his cup of tea, Steve had found himself riveted by the first one. The sequel was shaping up to be pretty good as well, if a little gratuitously violent. Bucky, meanwhile, had been absolutely enthralled by the pictures.

That was really the perfect way to pass an evening.

The night wore on, long after they’d picked over dinner and made it through the third picture in the series. It had been quite a bit bleaker and harsher than either of the previous two had been, and though Steve had found it interesting enough, he wasn’t sure he was up for watching the fourth picture in the series. He was also finding it hard to keep pushing past feeling tired. 

That, and he was more than ready for things to get back to normal. Having Bucky away for two nights hadn’t been pleasant, and the more he thought about the simple pleasure of falling asleep next to Bucky, the more he felt like getting to it.

“It’s late,” he finally said as he got to his feet, stretched, and yawned. “I don’t think I can make it through the fourth one.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty tired.” Bucky shut the television off and looked over the takeout boxes on the coffee table. “Think there’s anything left?”

Steve rubbed a hand across the back of his neck in a universal gesture of weariness and peered down into the boxes. “Nothing worth much.” He looked over at Bucky and smiled. “Probably not even enough for a snack that would do anything more than make you even hungrier after you ate it.”  
Bucky frowned at that, and between the two of them, it only took a few minutes to clean everything up.

“Tomorrow we should do pizza though.” Bucky turned off the kitchen lights. “They do that big cookie thing that we like.”

Steve shook his head and gave a tired laugh. “I can’t believe you’re already thinking about tomorrow night’s dinner. I’m so full I’m having trouble keeping my balance.”

“Well, that’s-” Bucky started to say, but it turned into yawn. “That’s you.”

Steve yawned in response - why were yawns contagious that way? - and shook his head again, smiling. “You coming to bed, Bucky?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said easily, as if the response should have been obvious. “Yeah, let’s go to bed.”

In his room, Steve shucked his clothes and donned his pajamas quickly and methodically, with movements so familiar he didn’t have to think about them. Bucky came in soon afterward, dressed in his own pajamas, and in a minute’s time, Steve was letting out a long and satisfied sigh as he settled back into his pillow and rolled over to curl his body around Bucky’s.

That was good. That was the way things were supposed to be.

“I’m glad you’re home, Buck.”

“Yeah.” A moment of silence, then, “I like it here.”

“I like it when you’re here,” Steve replied with a tired smile, his arms tightening around Bucky’s middle. He paused for a moment, trying to think of the best way to bring up what really needed to be brought up. Or did it? Was it better to just let it go and sleep? To ignore it and try to put it out of his mind?

Maybe. Until it happened again.

But then again, what was the point of bringing it up right that minute? Bucky was back home; they were comfortable and well-fed and happy. There would be plenty of time tomorrow to talk things over. And besides, that reminded him...

“Hey Buck.” He smiled. “You know what the day after tomorrow is?”

“That horrible picture we watched last week?” Bucky sounded a bit too smug and self-satisfied at his answer.

“Jerk.” Steve shook his head, his smile broadening. “It’s my birthday. A bunch of people are going to come by in the evening and we’re going to have a barbecue on the roof.”

Another stretch of silence. “Which people?”

“Wanda.” He wriggled his body closer to Bucky’s as he spoke. “Sam and Sharon, too. Maybe Clint.” He paused. “Natasha.”

Bucky relaxed against him. “Those are okay people. I don’t mind them.”

“Me neither.” Steve hugged Bucky more tightly and smiled. Burrowed his face into the back of Bucky’s neck and breathed in the scent of him and felt the reassuring presence of him there in the bed. Bucky was back home, back where he belonged.

“They like you too,” Steve said after a long moment. “Wanda likes playing tourist with you, and Sam - well, Sam likes everybody. And Natasha…” He trailed off, going quiet for a moment as he thought about what Natasha and Bucky meant to one another. And about what it might mean for him.

“I know Natasha likes me,” Bucky said softly. “And I know she likes you, too.”

Steve chuckled. “Not in the same way, though.” He tried to keep his voice positive, but a little sliver of apprehensive regret made it into his words. “Not like she likes you.”

“Oh no, Steve.” He could practically _feel_ Bucky smirking. “Do you think she _likes me_ likes me?”

“Yeah.” Steve rolled his eyes and jabbed his chin into Bucky’s shoulder, earning himself an elbow in the stomach. He could be so obnoxious sometimes. “She asked me to pass you a note during study hall.”

“Think she wants me to ask her to prom?” Bucky said eagerly. “Before some other fella asks her?”

“You mean you haven’t asked her yet?” Steve’s voice came out muffled, speaking as he was into the back of Bucky’s right shoulder. “You spent two whole days with her and you’re still not set for the dance?” He shook his head. “I thought I was the one who didn’t know how to talk to girls.”

“Well.” Bucky snorted. “She didn’t give me a lot of time to _talk._ ”

“Oh.” Steve lapsed into silence, finding himself stupidly tongue-tied at that straightforward admission. His earlier anxiety began to come back to him, prodding at his mind and squeezing at his heart. And in response, he curled himself more closely around Bucky, like a cocooning caterpillar.

After a moment, Bucky’s hands came to rest on Steve’s. “You falling asleep?”

“Not yet.” Steve spread his fingers, letting Bucky’s come to rest between them, and then tightened his hands as their fingers interlaced. “I’m still awake. For a little bit, at least.”

“I’m drifting,” Bucky murmured, thumbs moving gently against Steve’s hands. “I’m glad we watched all those pictures though. I like when we do that.”

“Me too.” Steve smiled into the juncture of Bucky’s neck and shoulder. “I like having you here, Buck, no matter what we’re doing.” He chuckled. “Even just staying in, eating junk, and watching serials. I’m just happy to have you back.”

“Not junk.” Bucky yawned, but tried to talk through it. “Thai food is good. Pizza is good.”

“I mean it, Bucky.” Steve hugged him tighter, suddenly feeling the overwhelming need to let him know just how important he was. Just how much he meant, and how lost Steve would be without him. “We could do nothing but exercise all day without saying one word to each other, and I’d still be glad to have you here.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be happy with that…” Bucky said softly, in the serene tone that suggested he was moments from sleep. “No breakfast? No good…”

And as Steve drifted off to sleep, a contented smile on his face, he looked forward to waking up next to Bucky the following morning. Making breakfast, having a long jog - getting back into their established routine.

Back to normal.

\---

“So how many should I make?” Clint stood over at the grill in the middle of the roof, an apron tied around his waist and a pair of tongs in his hand. 

Sharon took a sip from her bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade and studied the card table, which was laden down with an assortment of meats. “Well, you have at least twelve steaks.” 

Wanda raised an eyebrow. “There’s only seven of us here. Even if we’re joined by others, how are we going to go through twelve steaks, plus ribs and chicken and… is that bacon-wrapped sausage?”

“It’s pig-in-a-pig,” Clint said cheerfully. “An American tradition. I put ‘em together myself.”

“Anyway, have you seen some of these boys?” Natasha smirked and took a pull on her own Hard Lemonade. “We’ll go through twelve steaks. I’d be surprised if we have any leftovers.”

“All right, executive decision.” Clint flourished the tongs like a baton twirler. “They’re all going on.”

“Not all at once, man.” Sam walked over to the grill, a bottle of Mexican beer in his hand and a pained expression on his face. “You won’t be able to pay attention to all twelve of them at once. Here, let me do it.”

“A man and his cooking fire are not to be interfered with.” Clint raised the tongs like a sword and pointed them at Sam, who rolled his eyes and stepped back. “This grill is my domain, and I am its absolute ruler.”

A small smile flitted across Natasha’s mouth. “Well, at least you get to rule that much.”

Steve leaned against the side of the roof access brick enclosure, his own bottle of beer in his hand and a broad smile on his face, watching his friends interact. The three ladies sat in folding lawn chairs near the table, sipping their drinks and chatting amicably. Clint and Sam bickered over the grill. And Bucky stood there by the edge of the roof, taking it all in and occasionally raising a bottle of beer to his lips.

“Hey, Buck.” Steve pushed off of the wall with his shoulder and headed over to Bucky. “You all right?”

“It’s nice.” Bucky took a swig of the beer. “All that meat about to go on the grill.”

“I know.” Steve smiled and slung an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. 

At the grill, Sam and Clint were now arguing about how to season the steaks. The girls were talking about how to plan a night out together in the near future, which Sharon seemed to be saying was never likely to happen with their schedules the way they were. The sun was setting orangely behind the horizon, framed by purple clouds. The air was warm, the slight breeze was refreshing, and the evening ahead looked promising. The fireworks would start soon, and the smell of the charcoal fire was beginning to make Steve’s mouth water. 

“It’s a great night, isn’t it?”

Bucky leaned gently against Steve and took another pull on the beer. “The _salat lososya_ that Wanda brought looks good too.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t look bad.” Steve gave Bucky’s shoulders a squeeze. 

Wanda had described the dish as a salmon, potato, and hardboiled egg salad that she lacked any sort of English name for, but both Bucky and Natasha had immediately recognized it for what it was. Steve, being a longtime potato salad man, had agreed with himself that he’d at least give it a chance. Despite its Russian origin and the fact that he still hated to hear the language coming from Bucky or see him treat Russian foods or mannerisms as familiar, he supposed he could live with Russian potato salad. It wasn’t the biggest concession to make. 

“But I’m mostly looking forward to those steaks.” He smiled. “And watching the show on the river.”

Bucky drained off the last of his beer. “And the apple pie and ice cream that Natasha brought.”

Natasha hadn’t even bothered to hide her smirk with that one. And Sharon had outright grinned in his face when she’d presented him with an Old Glory cake. Clint had brought napkins emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes as well. Everyone had gone a bit overboard with the theme of the party, but Steve didn’t mind. In fact, it made him smile. Secretly, of course, when he didn’t have to pretend to be scowling at it.

“I don’t know if I’ll even have room for pie after all that steak I’m planning on eating.” He polished off his own beer and gestured towards the cooler. “You want another one?”

The steaks turned out to be as good as he’d hoped they would be. So did the chicken, and the ribs, and the pig-in-a-pig, and even the Russian potato-egg-and-salmon thing. There was plenty of food to go around, even considering how much Steve and Bucky managed to put away. In fact, there was enough left over that Maria Hill and Carol Danvers could have full plates when they dropped by. Together, as it turned out; they’d quietly begun a relationship several weeks beforehand. And just as the two of them were getting into the swing of the party, Tony dropped by with Rhodey and Pepper in tow.

“Your security system’s positively geriatric,” Tony said by way of greeting. “No offense to present company. I practically just walked in.”

Pepper shook her head. “You did just walk in, Tony.” 

“You were invited.” Rhodey smiled apologetically at Steve. “That’s what you get for inviting him.”

“A formality. I could’ve bypassed these Stone-Age safeguards in my sleep.” Tony waved his hand dismissively. “You want an upgrade for your birthday? Because I can do that.”

“Yes, do that.” Bucky looked between Tony and Steve. “His security system is shit.”

“Hey!” Steve turned to Bucky, but before he could say what was on his mind, Natasha broke in.

“His security system is shit,” she confirmed, and off Steve’s looked added, “Do you know how quickly I can pick those locks?”

“I offered to make you a key, you know.” Steve glowered at Natasha. “You’re the one who thinks it’s fun to pick my locks.”

Natasha shrugged. “It is fun to pick your locks.”

“Doesn’t make the security system any less shit,” Bucky added, and when Steve glared at him, he simply took a long pull on his beer. 

“If you thought the security system wasn’t working right, why didn’t you say something before?” Steve put his hands on his hips. “You’ve been living here for months. It’s not like you didn’t have the opportunity.”

Bucky snorted. “Like you would’ve listened.”

“And would you have come to me?” Tony gestured with his beer bottle. “Or would you have just decided to go out and pick up a golden retriever from the pound?”

“Definitely a golden retriever.” Natasha smiled.

“All right, fine.” Steve threw up his hands in defeat. “I guess I’m getting a new security system for my birthday. Thanks, Tony.”

“Thank me after the install.” Tony grinned. “Come by the Tower sometime during the next couple of days. I’ve been working on a few things I’m pretty sure you’ll like.”

“You’ve been…” Steve’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. How long have you been planning this?”

The conversation went back and forth for a while, from security systems to general shop talk to Clint and Sam announcing that they were going to be grilling all the rest of the meat, so “everyone better still be damn well good and hungry.” Then Carol and Maria began mixing drinks and declaring that it was time to do shots before the fireworks started.

“So they called this one the ‘B-52,” Carol announced, holding up a very full shot glass. “Because it feels like a bomb going down your throat.”

“And this one is ‘A Kick in the Balls.’” Maria smirked and pushed the shot glass into Steve’s hands. “Tequila, whiskey, and Yukon Jack.”

“One hundred proof Canadian liquor,” Sharon read from the Yukon Jack bottle and looked up at Steve. “Your liver may need a vacation after this.”

“One hundred…” Steve looked at the bottle, aghast, and held the shot glass between two fingers distrustfully. “Where did you even get a hundred proof Canadian liquor?”

“Canada, Steve,” Bucky muttered around the mouth of his beer bottle. “They got it from Canada.”

“It was a rhetorical question.” Steve glared at Bucky. “And while we’re on the subject, why would I want to drink something that’s named ‘A Kick in the Balls’?”

“Bottoms up, Cap.” Carol grinned and knocked back her B-52 without hesitation, and Steve couldn’t just let a thing like that stand. After all, Carol was USAF, and the Army couldn’t afford to be shown up by the Air Force, now could it?

“Right back at you, Cap,” Steve replied and, grimacing, tossed back his Kick in the Balls. It tasted horrible and scorched his throat on the way down, and he swallowed furiously, his eyes watering. “God, that’s awful.”

Maria smiled serenely, though her eyes glimmered. “Care for round two?”

“All right, all right.” Sam set his beer bottle down on one of the tables. “Get everybody set up. We’re all doing this.”

The drinks kept coming, and whether it was Steve’s imagination that made them taste a little bit less horrible every time or whether it was his taste buds being numbed by the ridiculous alcohol content, he wasn’t sure. But everyone was smiling and laughing and having a good time, and Sam and Sharon had their arms around each other, and so did Maria and Carol, and so did Tony and Pepper and Rhodey, and Wanda and Clint were sipping their drinks and chatting, and Natasha kept looking over at him as he stood there with Bucky, and there was something in her eyes that made him smile back a bit sheepishly.

And then the first of the fireworks burst in the sky, and they all turned to watch.

“Come on, everybody,” Clint said, as the roof was bathed in a neon splash of colors. “Start ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing.’ If we’re going to watch, we’re going to watch it right.”

On cue, Tony and Pepper and Rhodey and Sam and Sharon came out with a monotone “Oooooooh… Ahhhhhhh…” Natasha rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, but she couldn’t manage to keep the smile off her face. And Steve simply laughed and kept his eyes on the sky. 

More starbursts were coming now, amidst the sizzling and crackling of the smaller fireworks and the dull and powerful booms of the big ones. Those had been his favorites when he’d been a kid - the ones that exploded with such force that he could feel the shock of them resonate through his ribcage. 

“Hey, buddy.” Bucky was at his side suddenly, fresh bottle of beer in hand. “Happy Birthday. Look what I got you.”

Time seemed to fall in on itself right then. It was as if the years had just melted away all at once and left them back in the 1930s, watching the fireworks from the beach at Coney Island with a couple of beers between them and Bucky saying the same line. The same line he used every year, the one that Steve had always rolled his eyes at and pretended to be exasperated over, but that it wouldn’t have been his birthday without hearing.

“You remembered.” Steve’s eyes prickled suddenly and a lump rose in his throat. He turned away from the fireworks, reaching out his arms to enfold Bucky in a big hug. “I can’t believe you remembered.”

“It felt right,” Bucky murmured, arms going around Steve. “It just came to me.”

Steve tried to keep his lip from quivering, but he knew it was a losing battle from the beginning. He hugged Bucky more tightly, hoping to at least keep Bucky from seeing the contortions his face was going through until he could get them under control.

Apparently he was doing a very good job of it, because a moment later, Bucky pulled back and looked at him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He brought his forehead to rest against Bucky’s, his hand coming up to curl around the back of Bucky’s neck and pull their heads together, and smiled a bit shakily. “It’s just… I was hoping one day I’d get to hear you say that again. And you said it so soon, and I didn’t tell you about it or prompt you or anything.” 

He took a deep breath to banish the lump in his throat. Only momentarily, as it turned out, but it was enough to allow him to get the words out. 

“Seeing you come so far in such a short time - that’s the best present I could have gotten.”

A beat, then, “Really? Better than the pig-in-a-pig? Or the five steaks I watched you eat?” A smirk flitted across Bucky’s mouth. “Or the Old Glory cake?”

“Yes, Bucky.” Steve rolled his eyes and knocked his forehead against Bucky’s in mild annoyance. “Better than all of that.”

Well, at least he didn’t have to worry about that lump in his throat anymore. 

The smirk settled on Bucky’s mouth. “Better than ‘A Kick in the Balls’ even?” 

Steve snorted, just barely holding back the smile, and reached up to put both hands on the back of Bucky’s head. “You’re such a jerk, you know that?”

“Hey, boys.” Natasha’s voice sounded almost in his ear, startling him. He turned his head to see her standing there wearing a smirk and holding a couple of plates of apple pie and ice cream. “Are you just going to keep staring soulfully into each other’s eyes all night long, or are you going to have some pie?”

Bucky took one of the plates without any hesitation. “Pie.”

Steve chuckled, the tension broken, and took another plate. “Pie for now,” he smiled. “Soulful staring later. After the fireworks, maybe.”

He stood there by the edge of the roof, eating his pie and watching the fireworks explode over the river. Bucky stood there next to him, a small and peaceful smile on his face, doing very much the same thing. And Natasha came up between them and looped an arm around each of their waists.

He looked out at the multicolored starbursts as they bloomed against the night sky and thought about how lucky he was. He was surrounded by friends on his birthday, he was living in the place he loved most in the world, and against all odds, he had Bucky back. It brought a smile to his face as he put an arm around Natasha’s shoulders and rested that hand on Bucky’s back.

Not bad for a kid from Brooklyn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feed the author! (Apple pie would be great.) NOM NOM NOM. Feeding the author is warmly encouraged.


	20. Unexpected Guests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky stood a few feet away in the dining area, leaning against the kitchen breakfast bar, a bottle of Boylan’s Creamy Red Birch Beer in one hand. His white t-shirt was splattered with what Steve at first thought was beet juice._
> 
> _Or he might have thought that, had there not been a bloodied and bruised looking man duct taped to a chair right beside him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If they're ["speaking like this,"] then they are speaking in Russian.

**Brooklyn**  
**early July 2015**

The question had been lingering in Bucky’s mind for several weeks and many seemingly pointless missions.

Well, maybe not _entirely_ pointless missions. They were rooting out HYDRA in the US and Europe and other places, and Bucky owed them that much, so yeah, important work was being done. Even if it was being done far too slowly and even if they were no closer to the General than they had been before.

“Nothing is stopping me from just going after him,” Bucky said to Wanda, while they picked up food at a Russian deli in Little Odessa.

“From just going after General Lukin? You mean, by yourself?” Wanda said shrewdly, and when Bucky didn’t reply to that, she nodded. “No, I suppose nothing is. Except that you would be giving up everything you have earned for yourself to go after one man, and it would probably be a trap, and that would be the end of the life you have made here.”

Bucky scowled and paid for their lunch, and when he complimented the _babushka_ on the quality of her _okroshka_ , she pointed him to the Black Sea Bookstore down the street.

“Maybe I should learn to cook something.” Despite the heat - or maybe because of it - he and Wanda walked quickly enough to the bookstore. “Steve only knows how to cook breakfast. We eat a lot of takeout for dinner.”

“Yes, that would be a much more valuable use of your time,” Wanda said. “Much better than a suicide mission to find one man.”

Bucky scowled at that, and ten minutes later, the elderly lady behind the counter of the bookstore sold him _A Taste of the Home Country_ after grilling him for a few minutes on exactly how little he knew how to cook.

[“Young men always miss the taste of home when they come here,”] she said, and Bucky had nothing to say to that.

“I should learn to cook something,” Bucky said to Steve over breakfast. “Wanda thinks it would be a valuable use of my time.”

“Does she now?” Steve smiled as he popped a forkful of sausage into his mouth. “Well, I wouldn’t be opposed. But what do you think of the idea?”

“I bought a cookbook.” Bucky sipped at his coffee and aimed for a casual tone. “She thinks it would be a more valuable use of my time than a suicide mission.”

Steve seemed to gag on his sausage. “What…?” His eyes went wide and he coughed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Bucky shrugged. “That’s just how she phrased it.” He ate half of a waffle in one bite.

“What suicide mission?” Steve put down his glass of orange juice after draining half of it off. “What were the two of you talking about?”

“Food.” Bucky ate the other half of his waffle. “Anyway, I was thinking I could try to cook something for us.”

“You’re changing the subject.” Steve lowered his eyebrows and looked across the table at Bucky with a very serious expression. “You can’t just casually drop the words ‘suicide mission’ into a conversation and then go on talking about food like it’s nothing.”

Bucky forked another waffle onto his plate. “It is nothing. I’m not taking any suicide missions.” 

Maybe.

He poured a liberal dose of syrup onto his waffle. “Do you like my cooking idea or not?”

Steve looked at him for a long moment, his mouth opening and closing a few times, before replying slowly and with seemingly great care.

“Yes.” Steve picked up his fork again, still watching Bucky with what looked like suspicion. “Yes, it’s a much better idea than the one you must have had.”

Bucky ate his waffle in silence.

The next several days brought a flurry of missions - none of them suicidal, and, in fact, routine enough that he brought up his idea to Natasha while in the middle of taking down some HYDRA asshole’s private militia in who-the-fuck-knew-where, Latvia (“Juanjelgava,” Agent Coulson had said calmly into Bucky’s earpiece).

[“I bought a cookbook,”] he said in what he hoped was a casual tone. [“I was thinking I should learn to cook something.”]

[“A cookbook?”] Natasha managed to sound completely relaxed and even mildly amused despite engaging with four soldiers at once. [“So when are you going to take over breakfast duty from Rogers?”]

Bucky snorted. [“I’m not. That’s his job.”] Something exploded off to the side, and it took a moment to deal with that before he could resume the conversation. [“But maybe I could try to cook us something.”] He cleared his throat. [“Maybe.”]

He was actually somewhat happy that a fresh surge of targets chose that moment to come crashing through the ornate glass ceiling. 

[“How does Thursday night sound?”] Natasha sounded pleased and - was it his imagination? - even a bit hopeful. Considering she was in the process of beating wholesale ass on the new group of targets just made it that much more amazing. [“I’m free.”]

[“That’s…”] He counted off the days in his head. [“That’s in two days.”] He dropped a few targets before they could detach themselves from their rappelling lines. [“I haven’t learned how to cook anything yet.”]

[“That’s what the cookbook is for.”] There was an audible smile in Natasha’s voice as she knocked one guard corkscrewing to the ground with a spinning heel kick and twisted another down with a wristlock. [“You follow the directions, and you learn as you go.”]

“English, please,” Coulson said mildly into both of their earpieces, and Bucky was almost grateful for the intrusion. 

Twelve minutes later, their primary target was found and - after Natasha shot him with a dart full of poison antidote - acquired. Seventeen minutes after that, they were extracted onto a Quinjet, which brought them up to the Helicarrier.

Bucky disappeared quickly after the debriefing to sign weapons back into the armory. He wasn’t at all running away from Natasha and his own stupid suggestion to cook her a meal. And he wasn’t at all surprised when he turned to leave the armory and found her leaning against the door frame with a small smile on her face.

Apprehensive, maybe. But not surprised.

[“You ready to call it quits for the evening?”] She twirled a set of keys on the tip of her finger. [“‘Cause I don’t have to sign the Porsche back in unless I want to. Which I never do.”]

[“Maybe,”] he said carefully. [“But you’re not driving me home to cook something at two in the morning. I haven’t even taken the shrink wrap off the book yet.”]

A lie - the book hadn’t even come shrink wrapped. And he had laid in bed the other night, reading it, while Steve complained next to him that the whole thing was written in Russian.

[“Who said anything about cooking tonight?”] The corners of her mouth rose another couple of millimeters, and her eyes seemed to sparkle. [“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Netflix and chill’.”]

Her mouth was mesmerizing, and it took him a moment to remember to look up into her eyes. 

[“You want to watch something?”] he asked, with the certainty that the conversation had gotten away from him somehow. 

[“It’s a euphemism.”] Her smile widened, and she came forward to put both her arms around his neck and look up into his eyes. [“You should call Steve. He’ll worry if he doesn’t know you’re not coming home tonight.”]

[“I thought we were…”] He stopped himself before he could say anything deeply stupid and instead slid his arms around her waist and pulled her in closer.

They hadn’t talked about what had happened a few days ago. He hadn’t known how to bring it up, and anyway, if she wasn’t going to say anything, he sure as hell wasn’t. If she had wanted to pretend that they hadn’t done anything, then he would go along with that. He was very good at not talking about things.

But then there she was, arms around him, a gleam in her eyes, and an invitation for him to go home with her. 

He could figure out the rest later.

[“Okay,”] he murmured against her lips. [“Let me…”]

He had been about to suggest that he just go and talk to Steve - he was only a few floors away, after all - but there was something uncomfortable about that. A strange, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. The idea that he didn’t want to see the expression on Steve’s face. The weirdness of being separated for a night or two - not in their big bed together, not having breakfast the next day, not going jogging after they ate. 

And yet, he wanted to go home with Natasha. The thought of it filled him with such… dizzying _happiness_ , he realized, that he couldn’t even begin to figure out how to put it into words. He felt lightheaded and breathless at the idea - that they could spend the night together, that no one would catch them and punish them for it, that they could lay in bed the next morning and just _be_ , and it was allowed, and she wanted him.

He wanted her.

He wanted to be home with Steve.

He wasn’t sure what any of that meant.

[“Let me call him,”] he said, and pulled out his phone, and wondered how he could be uncomfortable and excited, dizzy with happiness and sick with uncertainty all at once.

\---

[“I’m still here, James,”] she said softly as she took his hand and moved it away from the ragged circle of scar tissue on her abdomen. [“Don’t torture yourself.”]

He’d been lingering over the scar for the past few minutes, tracing it meditatively with his fingertips with a haunted look in his eyes as they lay there in her rumpled bed, in the wreckage they’d made of her room. And when she’d tried to subtly distract him from focusing on it by guiding his attention back up to her face, he’d drifted to the scar on her shoulder.

She knew why, of course; he’d given her both wounds. And now that he had the opportunity to do so, he was forcing himself to dwell on what he’d done to her. Never mind that he hadn’t chosen to do it, never mind that she knew perfectly well he would’ve blown his own head off rather than hurt her if he’d been able to make the choice himself - he still couldn’t let it go.

[“I didn’t want to,”] he whispered, and despite the fact that they were both naked in bed, despite the fact that they had made love several times over - or maybe because of it, because of how vulnerable they were in the moment - he looked raw with agony. [“I never wanted to hurt you.”]

[“Stop that now.”] She took his hand in both of hers and brought it to her lips. [“You can’t go blaming yourself forever, especially when I don’t even blame you.”]

She hated to see that awful guilt carving lines into his face. She hated to think of what must have been going through his mind as he stared at the ugly marks on her body. And she hated that even when he’d been freed from their captivity and started on his road to recovery, the things they’d made him do still had the power to bring him low.

She knew exactly how he felt. There were enough horrors in her past to make her wince if an unguarded thought made its way into her consciousness and reminded her of just what she was capable of.

[“I can-”] he started, but she cut him off. 

[“I don’t blame you,”] she repeated, letting her lips flutter against the skin of his fingertips as she held his hand to her mouth. [“I survived, and none of it was your fault, and it’s time for the both of us to move forward.”]

[“You make it sound so easy…”] He held her eyes for a moment, then settled his head against her chest. She wrapped her arms around him and cradled him against her body, the fingers of one hand threading into his hair.

[“It isn’t,”] she replied, idly twisting locks of his hair around her fingers. 

She knew all too well how hard it was to move forward from the things she hated the most about herself. The things she’d done that she couldn’t ever undo, the ugliness she’d helped perpetuate and the lives she’d ended or ruined forever. But she’d had to learn how to carry her baggage with her, to remind herself why she’d chosen the path she now walked, and James would have to learn to do the same.

[“Moving on is never easy.”] She smiled before going on. [“But it’s a lot less difficult when the person you hurt is right here forgiving you and trying to get you to forgive yourself.”] Her smile broadened. [“Especially given what we’ve been doing for the past hour.”]

[“Well…”] She could feel the quirk of his lips against her skin. [“There is that.”]

[“Yes.”] She kissed the top of his head, taking in a quick whiff of the scent of him as she did. [“There is that.”]

He was silent for long enough that she could tell he was turning something over in his mind. Finally, slowly, he said, [“It would be a lot easier if I could finish paying HYDRA what I owe them.”]

She looked down at him with knitted eyebrows. [“You’re in the middle of doing just that. We all are. And now that we’ve got the antidote, things should speed up even more.”] Her eyes narrowed slightly. [“Unless that wasn’t what you meant at all.”]

James said nothing.

[“You’re not thinking of going after them on your own again, are you?”] The sudden realization gripped her heart like a vise. If she lost him now… [“James, haven’t we been through this enough?”]

Again he was silent for far too long. [“Not all of them. Just one.”]

[“No.”] She was up on her elbow in an instant, locking eyes with him and hoping the growing cold numbness she felt spreading through her chest didn’t show. Or maybe hoping it did; she didn’t know. 

All she knew was that she couldn’t lose him to Lukin now. Not now, not after beating such impossible odds to get him back. Not after finding him again after everything in the world had conspired to keep their love from taking hold. And definitely not because he’d willingly walked into the meat grinder Lukin certainly had waiting for him.

[“You are not going after Lukin on your own, do you hear me?”] She fixed him with the most deadly serious Black Widow’s stare she could muster. The kind that turned hardened killers’ guts to cold slush. [“Did you just forget what everyone told you after he hacked into your phone? That he wants you to go after him alone, so you won’t have the protection of the rest of us watching your back?”]

[“If not me, then who?”] He shook his head in frustration. [“If not now, when? it’s been _months_ , Natalia. I got out of prison in April. It’s July. So when?”]

[“I told you who, James.”] Her fear stoked the heat of her frustration with him. [“All of us. Together, so he won’t be able to spring the trap he’s bound to have set up and all ready for you. He’s too smart for us to take any chances with, don’t you understand that?”]

[“Then what are we waiting for?”] he said through gritted teeth, his whole body tensing up. [“Why aren’t we moving on this?”]

[“Like I said.”] The frustration roiled in her, but it wasn’t directed at James any longer. [“He’s too smart. Too smart to leave anything for us to move on.”] She sighed explosively, shook her head, and looked back over at him. [“He’s a former general in the Soviet army and one of the richest men on the planet. Most of the Russian government has something or other to do with him, and so does nearly everyone in the Russian corporate structure. It’s not going to be as simple as arresting him.”]

James snorted. [“I never said anything about arresting anyone.”]

She sighed again, her frustration right back on him again. [“James, think about this for a moment. If you - if any of us - go walking into his office and put a bullet in his head, all that the rest of the world is going to see is a high-profile businessman and decorated military veteran being assassinated in cold blood. And that’s all it’s going to take for the Russians to stop going after HYDRA and start going after us instead.”] 

[“Nobody would see anything,”] he said slowly, in a tone that suggested he was trying very hard not to become annoyed. [“I can do that. That’s all I’ve ever done. You, out of anyone, should know that.”]

[“And if there are no traces, nothing for anyone to see, the first person they’re going to come looking for as a suspect is the world’s deadliest assassin.”] A beat. [“You, out of anyone, should know that.”] 

Something like shock, followed by sudden realization landed on his face. [“That’s…”] His eyes widened slightly. [“That’s never been an issue before.”]

[“Because HYDRA had a vested interest in making sure nobody knew you.”] Her lips tightened into a grim line. [“So they could still use you. Putting your name and your face out there was the smartest thing Rogers could’ve done, because now HYDRA can’t ever use you again.”] She raised an eyebrow. [“And it also changes the way you’re going to have to do things. Which is also a pretty smart idea, I’d say.”]

[“Well…”] The expression on James’ face turned into bewilderment and the tension seemed to drain out of him. He settled back onto her chest. [“Well, shit.”]

She settled back into the mattress and gathered his head against her chest again, trying to temper her frustration with some sympathy. [“I know how badly you want him. But we’ve got to be smart about the way we do it, or we may wind up tearing things apart even worse than HYDRA’s already done.”]

He sighed. And for a long time, she just held him there. Breathed in the scent of him, wound his hair around her fingertips, and immersed herself in the feeling of just being able to lie there with him the way normal people did. The kind of normal she’d wanted for such a long time, and had always known she could never have - not really. 

But damned if she wasn’t going to fight like hell for every shred of it she could manage.

[“So what were you saying before about cooking me dinner?”] she said after a while, smiling into his hair.

[“I had some really good okroshka the other day.”] He ran the tips of his metal fingers up and down her side. [“Somehow that led to me buying a cookbook.”]

[“Well,”] she said as the light touch of his cool metal fingertips on the warmth of her skin raised goosebumps, [“it’s not a bad idea for one of us to know how to cook.”] She smiled unapologetically. [“I’m hopeless, and I have no desire to get any better. So I guess it’s up to you.”]

[“I thought I’d cook for you.”] His hand stilled on her hip. [“For both of you.”]

It struck her as suddenly odd that she should feel disconcerted in any way about his mentioning Rogers when the two of them were naked in bed together. James had been her lover more than half a century ago, and he’d been her lover a decade ago, and he’d become her lover again in just the most recent week. And yet, she’d seen how he and Rogers looked at one another. How they behaved around each other. 

Part of her mind told her she was being unnecessarily paranoid. Jealous, even, when she had no right in the world to be. Another part of her, a more grounded and rational part, told her that if either of them had cause for jealousy, it was probably Rogers. 

But there was still an insistent nagging thought that kept intruding. Telling her that two men didn’t sleep in the same bed, wrapped around each other night after night, if they were nothing more than friends. That a man didn’t choose to flop down on top of another man as he lay on the sofa unless there was something more than friendship there - or at least the potential for something more than friendship.

[“I’d like you to cook for me,”] she murmured into his hair. 

[“Both of you.”] Again he trailed his fingers up and down the length of her. [“I could try to make okroshka. Maybe borscht.”]

[“What about stroganoff?”] The thought of Rogers made it easy to imagine a hearty, meaty dish. He and James ate so much food that if there wasn’t something very filling on the menu, there’d be nothing left for her. [“Or pirozhki?”]

James snorted. [“Let me try not to fuck up soup first.”]

She couldn’t help but laugh. [“How could you fuck up soup?”]

Still, as she relaxed into the mattress with James’ head still resting comfortably against her shoulder and chest, she found thoughts of Rogers intruding on her mind. What did he imagine his relationship with James was? How did he see James’ relationship with her? And when James stayed with her for the night, what was Rogers thinking?

\---

Steve was thinking that he hated lying in that bed alone.

It had been good for a few days. Bucky had come back home after spending those nights with Natasha, and he’d gone right back to sleeping in the big bed alongside Steve, and things had gotten back to normal for a while. It had been good. He’d been happy.

And then he’d gotten a call from Bucky earlier that evening, and things had gone all the way out of whack again. Bucky had sounded excited, or nervous, or both, when he’d told Steve he was going to be spending another night over at Natasha’s. And Steve had told him in what he’d tried to make sound like an offhanded and cheerful way that of course that was fine, and would he say hi to Natasha for him? And then he’d hung up the phone and felt numb through the middle.

He hated lying there and feeling the way he felt. Of course he wanted Bucky to be happy with Natasha. He’d seen Bucky’s memories, hadn’t he? And he’d seen the looks on both their faces whenever they were together. They were happier now than he’d ever seen either of them before. How low would it be of him to want anything less for either of them? And yet…

And yet he’d been the one to go after Bucky when no one else had thought it could be done. He’d been the one to confront him on the Insight helicarrier, to try to get through to him and appeal to the man he’d known was in there underneath the artificial Winter Soldier persona. He’d been the one to take Bucky in, to shelter him, to lead the charge to bring him back to normal. He’d been the reason Bucky had even come back in the first place. 

It wasn’t fair.

Steve was immediately angry at himself for feeling that way. No, not just angry - sick to his stomach. He felt that familiar, awful fist made of frozen steel clenching at his guts, and it made him want to turn his stomach inside out. He loved Bucky and Natasha both, and it wasn’t as though he wanted either of them to be unhappy, but the thought of losing Bucky in any way made his mind lock up and his heart twist achingly in his chest.

In the end, he just lay there. Stared at the ceiling and let the pain wash over him, and lay there.

Waiting.

Eventually, when morning came and the pain the sunlight caused his eyes told him he hadn’t gotten anywhere close to enough sleep, he dragged himself out of bed and made himself get ready for the day. He ate breakfast, jogged, showered, and then stood in the middle of his living room not knowing what to do with himself. He thought briefly about heading over to the Tower or up to the Helicarrier, but he knew Maria would be able to do her job much more efficiently without him there asking questions. He got out his laptop and read through his daily security briefings, then simply sat there staring at the screen.

At some point, he heard the rattle of the front door and turned in his seat to see Bucky coming through the door with Natasha right behind him. He got to his feet hastily as they walked in, each holding a large brown paper grocery bag, and held out his hands out of pure habit.

“Can I give you a hand with those?”

“Sure.” Bucky deposited the bag into Steve’s open arms. “We went to that organic grocery place you like. The one with the plums.”

“He wants to cook us a nice dinner,” Natasha added with a smile as she hefted her own bag. 

“Yeah, I heard.” Steve couldn’t help the wry smile that came to his face. “Apparently a cookbook’s a better idea than a suicide mission, whatever that means.”

Bucky’s eyes widened at that and he looked from Steve to Natasha and sighed.

“Definitely a better idea.” Natasha turned, handing her grocery bag to Steve one-handed, and folded her arms as she looked sternly at Bucky. “Looks like you’ve been talking to the right people. Whoever they are.”

“Wanda,” Bucky muttered. “Wanda is the right people.”

“Then she gets an invite to the next meal,” Natasha responded. “She’s got a handle on your priorities, at least.”

“So.” Steve walked the grocery bags into the kitchen and set them down on the counter. Bucky and Natasha followed him, Natasha leaning against the breakfast bar and Bucky rummaging through the grocery bags. “What are we having, anyway?”

“Borscht with beef.” Bucky turned, a can of beets in one hand. “Figured if I’m going to fuck up soup, I’d fuck it up all the way.”

“How could you fuck up soup?” Steve wondered out loud, and he couldn’t understand why Natasha snorted with laughter at that.

Ninety minutes later, Bucky had very slowly cut up a slab of beef into small chunks, deposited it into a large soup pot, along with what seemed like at least a dozen cups of water, and then set it to boil, which it had been doing for the past forty-five minutes. Steve periodically stuck his head into the kitchen to see if Bucky wanted any assistance, but Bucky kept shooing him away and turning back to his increasingly large pile of chopped vegetables. Steve’s laptop sat on the counter, playing a variety of music from the 30’s and 40’s.

“You’re supposed to periodically skim the…” Bucky narrowed his eyes, staring at a page in his Russian cookbook. “I guess this would translate as… crud, maybe. Or just crap. Whatever. You’re supposed to periodically skim the crap off the top of the water.”

“Is that what you want me to do?” Steve started digging in his big utensil bucket, nudging a pizza wheel and the whisks of an egg beater aside. “I don’t think I have a skimmer, but I’ve got a couple of big spoons. That’ll probably work.”

Bucky grabbed the big spoon out of Steve’s hand. “I’ve got it. Go back to the living room.”

“Are you sure?” Steve began, but Bucky had already turned back to chopping vegetables. So, shrugging and sticking his hands in his pockets, Steve headed back out into the living room where Natasha sat perched on the arm of the sofa, crunching loudly at slices of bell pepper.

“He really seems determined to do the whole thing on his own.” Steve sat down on the sofa and took a slice of pepper for himself. “It’s going to take forever that way, isn’t it?”

“So?” Natasha shrugged. “You have any other plans, Rogers? A hot date lined up, perhaps?”

“You know I don’t.” He rolled his eyes at her, then raised one eyebrow. “You’re the one with all the luck in that department.”

Natasha hummed noncommittally and ate another slice of pepper. “So what’d you get up to last night?”

“Nothing.” Steve stared at a blank spot on the wall. “Or at least not as much as you and Bucky, I’d imagine.”

He had a moment - a very long and mortifying moment - to reflect on how petty that must have sounded before Natasha replied.

She raised an eyebrow and plucked another pepper slice off the vegetable platter. “You should get out more. Maybe start seeing people. Just because we put that conversation on hold for a few months doesn’t mean the idea is shelved forever.”

“I wasn’t kidding when I talked about shared life experience, you know.” Steve sighed and put his head in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees. This wasn’t a conversation that promised to go anywhere good. “And besides, I’m…” 

He hesitated. Natasha always seemed to see right through him. Would she know how edgy he’d been about Bucky’s relationship with her and what it meant for Bucky’s relationship with him? And if not, why else would she be bringing up the idea of finding him a date?

“Not really interested.” He hoped he didn’t sound as unsure of himself as he felt. “Right now.”

Natasha crunched on the pepper slice. “Oh?”

“Seriously, Natasha.” He sighed and looked up at her. “Who can I honestly relate to? Who could honestly relate to me? I’m sure there are tons of people who’d love to have a date with me, but none of them really know me.” He shook his head and laughed humorlessly. “Bucky’s really the one who knows me better than anybody in the world. You’re a close second. And beyond that…” He spread his hands, then let them fall.

Natasha looked at him for a long moment, but right as she opened her mouth, Bucky poked his head into the living room.

“We forgot black bread,” he said. 

“Can’t have borscht without black bread.” Natasha looked at Steve. “And now that I’m thinking about it, we didn’t pick up dessert either.”

Bucky frowned and said something that sounded like, “ _Zapekanka_?”

“Maybe.” A thoughtful expression crossed Natasha’s face. “Or maybe _pastila_?”

“ _Ptichie moloko_?” Bucky asked, and Steve had finally had enough.

“Guys, come on.” He looked up with a pained expression on his face. “Shouldn’t I be in this discussion somewhere?”

“Yeah.” Natasha pushed off the couch and put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “You’re coming with me to get the bread and dessert. Also, you’re driving.”

“But I don’t know what any of these desserts are…” Steve trailed off, then sighed and got to his feet. “It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m still driving.”

\---

Bucky watched Steve and Natasha leave the apartment, then turned the volume on the laptop up all the way. YouTube had a surprisingly good selection of what Natasha called “old man music,” and sometimes Bucky thought he even recognized some of the songs.

Like the one that started playing right then - “We’ll Meet Again” by a singer named Vera Lynn. Something about the singer, or maybe the lyrics, brought to mind images of dark, smoky pubs and tired young men in service uniforms, though he couldn’t say where or when any of that might have taken place. Maybe he’d ask Steve when he got back.

Maybe.

Anyway, according to the cookbook, he now needed to set the cooked, chopped beets aside and simmer onions, carrots, and butter in the same pan for a few minutes. While that was happening, he could add the chopped cabbage and tomatoes, along with the cooked beets, to the pot of simmering beef and water. 

He did all of that carefully, then moved to chop the parsley. The borscht would be ready in maybe another thirty minutes. Steve and Natasha would likely be back by then, and they could all sit down and see if Bucky had managed to fuck up soup or not. 

The floor creaked behind him.

Bucky sighed and shifted his grip on the knife. With his other hand - the metal one - he gripped the handle of the pan. He had a single split second to regret that his first attempt at dinner was indeed going to be very fucked up.

Then he whirled, flinging the pan into the surprised face of the shaven-headed man behind him. The man’s incoherent yell was cut off by the sound of the edge of the pan caving in the front of his skull, and the silenced pistol he’d been bringing up clattered to the floor at the feet of one of his comrades.

Seven of them.

In the chaotic mess that followed, the meal Bucky had been cooking was thoroughly destroyed along with Steve’s kitchen. The knife Bucky had been using to chop vegetables wound up in the eye socket of one of the assassins. The pot of borscht ended up knocked to the floor when Bucky slammed the head of one of the attackers into the stovetop. After pulling one man in front of a couple of gunshots, Bucky finished him off by driving his head into the countertop so hard that the thick butcher-block wood cracked.

Reaching into the utensil bucket for another knife, Bucky and another of the assassins had a ridiculous moment when they both stared dumbly at the pizza cutter he’d grabbed instead. Bucky recovered quickly, though, flipping the stupid thing around backhanded and jamming it into the hollow of the man’s throat, putting the palm of his metal hand against the end of the handle, and thrusting it hard enough into his throat that the flimsy metal bent against the man’s spinal column. 

And soon it was all over. There was no sound except for the steady dripping of borscht and blood onto the floor. Only one of the attackers was left alive - Bucky had flung open the freezer door into the top of his head and knocked him unconscious - and Bucky didn’t waste any time dragging him into the dining area and duct-taping him securely to a chair. He also reached into the man’s mouth and yanked out the poison tooth with the thumb and index finger of his metal hand. No sense letting him kill himself before he could talk.

Well, fuck.

\---

Natasha crouched in front of the glass case at the bakery. She had directed Steve to a Russian bakery not in Little Odessa (“take us too long to get there,” she had explained), but only ten minutes away in the Heights.

“See, Rogers?” She pointed to a fluffy looking confection that seemed to be made of yellow cake and marshmallow, with a hard chocolate topping. “ _Ptichie moloko_ \- bird’s nest cake. That’s what James was asking about.”

“Looks pretty good to me,” Steve said, peering at the cake. He turned to Natasha and grinned. “It looks like a giant Moon Pie.”

She rolled her eyes. “You would think that. It tastes a lot better than a giant Moon Pie though.” She pointed to another item in the case, one that resembled moist cake baked through with fruit. “And that one is _zapekanka_. Think of it like Russian cheesecake. James also suggested that one.”

“I’m going to stick with the Moon Pie.” Steve chuckled. “Cheesecake is a New York thing, not a Russia thing.”

“The Greeks invented cheesecake, Rogers. A couple thousand years ago.” Natasha stood and put a hand on Steve’s back. “There’s no _pastila_ though, so what will it be? Giant Moon Pie cake or decidedly not New York cheesecake?”

Steve paused a moment, a glower on his face that didn’t extend to his eyes. He was honestly having trouble keeping it in place. Natasha knew how to needle him better than anyone other than Bucky ever had. 

“Moon Pie,” he said finally. “And maybe New Yorkers didn’t invent cheesecake, but we sure as hell perfected it.” He raised a challenging eyebrow, a smile working at the corners of his mouth despite his best efforts. “Unlike the Russians.”

She smiled and shook her head, then said something in Russian to the girl playing on her phone behind the display case. A moment later, Steve and Natasha walked out of the bakery with two loaves of black bread and a box containing an entire Moon Pie cake.

“I know how you boys eat,” Natasha said, climbing onto the back of Steve’s bike. “A couple of slices wouldn’t have satisfied either of you.”

“After a big pot of beef stew?” Steve smiled back at her as he buckled on his helmet and kicked the bike into life. “You never know.”

Ten minutes later, Steve swung the bike back into his parking spot in the garage and offered his hand to Natasha as she got off the back of the bike. She accepted it, smiling, but handed him the bakery bag instead once both her feet were on the ground. And soon enough, they were at the front door.

“I should really get you a key made,” he said as he juggled his own keys and opened the lock. “Then at least you wouldn’t be breaking in when you come to visit.”

Bucky stood a few feet away in the dining area, leaning against the kitchen breakfast bar, a bottle of Boylan’s Creamy Red Birch Beer in one hand. His white t-shirt was splattered with what Steve at first thought was beet juice.

Or he might have thought that, had there not been a bloodied and bruised looking man duct taped to a chair right beside him.

“Bucky?” Steve dropped the bakery bag, his heart hammering in his chest, and was at Bucky’s side in a split second. “What happened? Are you all right? Who the hell is this guy?”

Natasha, meanwhile, had pulled out her pistol and begun checking the apartment. She stopped at the entrance to the kitchen and paused, her eyes widening. “You might not want to come in here, Steve.”

Steve looked at Bucky, taking in his bloodstained shirt and overly nonchalant attitude. “What happened here, Buck?”

Bucky scowled. “HYDRA happened.” He shrugged. “Or I assume they’re HYDRA. We didn’t get to talking yet.”

Natasha came back in, holstering her pistol beneath her jacket. “I’m going to call this in.” She laid a gentle hand on Steve’s arm. “Maria can have Phil Coulson and a security team here in twenty minutes. And the two of you are going to need someplace secure to stay until we figure out how to plug the leak that let these guys come in here.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s mouth was dry. He looked at Natasha dazedly, hardly even seeing her, then frowned as his eyes came back into focus. “Wait. What do you mean, ‘these guys’? All I see is one guy tied to a chair.”

“I told you, Rogers.” Natasha took out her phone and tapped at its screen a few times. “You might not want to look in the kitchen.”

So, naturally, that was what Steve did. And he immediately regretted it.

“Oh my God.” He staggered backwards at the sight of the extremely dead men that littered his destroyed kitchen - men with knives protruding from their eyes and throats and temples, men with crushed skulls and smashed faces, lying in pools of blood (or borscht?) on his floor. He backed slowly out of the kitchen, his hand on the wall for support, and turned to Bucky with horror on his face.

“They came here for you, didn’t they?”

“I told you.” Bucky set his soda down on the breakfast bar. “We didn’t get to talking yet.” He stepped into the kitchen, leaned over one of the bodies, and yanked a knife out of its eye socket. It came free with a sickening squelch.

Steve recoiled from the sound and slumped against the wall. “They came here to get you, and I wasn’t here.” He felt his chest and throat begin to tighten. “I should have been here.”

Bucky wiped the knife on his sweatpants and tossed it into the sink, and Steve felt nauseous.

“Aw, come on, Buck.” He fought down his rising gorge. “I’m not going to use that to cut up food; I just watched you pull it out of a dead man’s eye socket.”

“I…” Bucky chewed on his lip and looked away. “I wanted to keep them out of the rest of the house. To contain the damage.”

Steve felt horrible, watching Bucky’s face fall like that, and he immediately went over to Bucky and put his arms around him. “I’m not mad at you, Buck. None of this was your fault, and you did better than I could have done.” He grimaced. “I doubt the house would’ve been anywhere near this intact if I’d been here alone instead of you.”

“No.” Bucky leaned into Steve’s embrace, their foreheads gently coming together. “You would’ve trashed the place, especially once you started throwing that shield around.”

“Granted.” Steve felt a slight smile creep onto his face, but pulled back and winced. “But regardless, I’m not going to be using those knives again. We’ll go out sometime after this thing’s been settled and pick up a new set.”

“Hey,” Natasha said from the dining area, and the two of them broke apart to turn and look at her. She tucked the phone back into her jacket pocket. “Coulson and his team will be here in twenty. In the meantime, let’s hear what our guest has to say, shall we?”

“Yes,” Steve said, his eyes narrowing as he turned to regard the man strapped to the chair beside Bucky. His mouth had been covered with a strip of duct tape, which Steve roughly ripped aside, ignoring the man’s cry of pain. “How about it?” He folded his arms. “What do you have to say about why my kitchen’s destroyed and my best friend had to fight for his life? Don’t you people understand that you’re not getting him back no matter how many of you come after him?”

The man spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor. “You think this was about the Winter Soldier, Captain?” He snorted. “We weren’t here for him.”

“You weren’t…” Steve paused, confused, and looked from the man to Bucky, then to Natasha, and back again. “Then what the hell were you doing here?”

Despite being duct taped to a chair, bruised and bloodied, and minutes away from arrest, the man leered. “We were here for _you_ , Captain.”

“Me?” Steve’s face went slack with shocked, disbelieving confusion. “Why me?”

Natasha folded her arms. “I’d think that answer would be obvious. HYDRA’s getting scared.”

Steve’s eyes flickered from the bound HYDRA assassin back over to Natasha. He felt the confusion begin to drain away, but he wasn’t entirely convinced. “Scared?” He turned back to the assassin. “So you wanted to take me out, is that it? And you just had the bad luck to run into Bucky instead?”

“Yeah.” The man sneered, his teeth streaked with blood. “We just had the bad luck to run into _Bucky_.”

“They would’ve been watching the apartment.” Bucky picked up his bottle of birch beer off the breakfast counter. “They saw two people leave and guessed wrong.” He took a pull on the soda. “Low-rent assassins.”

“Yeah.” Steve snorted derisively at the bound man. “Lucky for us. Not so lucky for them.” He frowned. “Or my apartment.”

The captive HYDRA assassin remained silent as the rest of them stood there awaiting the arrival of Phil Coulson and his team. When they arrived, the first thing Coulson did was give Steve and Bucky a critical glance and nod with satisfaction when he saw they were unhurt. And then, while a handful of field agents hauled the still-bound assassin off to the waiting Quinjet and the rest of the team got to work on the destroyed kitchen, Coulson beckoned the three of them closer.

“It’s going to be a few days before you’re going to be cleared to stay here again, Captain.” Coulson offered a miniscule smile. “Aside from repairing the damage, the location has to be properly secured. But Stark checked in with us while we were en route. Seems he already had a talk with you about upgrading your security system.”

“That he did.” Steve shook his head. “And he’s never going to let me hear the end of it.”

“Us either.” Coulson’s fractional smile never wavered. “Which is why we’re going to be providing him security while he does his work over the next few days. During which time you’re going to have to remain at a secure location. Ideally at the Tower.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Steve couldn’t understand the smile in Natasha’s voice or eyes. “Better go pack your bags, boys.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you hungry NOW?! As always, questions, comments, and food talk are warmly welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.


	21. Stickiness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky’s mouth thinned into a line and his gaze dropped to the floor. After a moment, he said, “I know you miss… him. Me, I guess? I don’t know.” He shook his head. “The Bucky Barnes from the museum. That Bucky. The one who would’ve never forgotten his own name.”_
> 
> _“Oh, Bucky.”_
> 
> _Steve’s heart crumpled, and he was pretty sure his face did the same._

**Avengers Tower**  
**same evening**

Steve tossed his duffel bag and shield into his bed in the suite he kept at the Tower. He wasn’t used to staying there very often - he really only maintained it for convenience and emergencies like this one - and he certainly hadn’t reckoned on staying for any longer than one night at a time. Spending a week there was going to feel strange. 

Well, maybe not so much, considering that Bucky was going to be staying right there with him. Bucky didn’t have his own suite of rooms at the Tower, and given the short-notice nature of their stay and the fact that Bucky lived with Steve to begin with, no one had batted an eye at Steve’s suggestion that Bucky stay in the suite with him. And it might have been possible that the thought of keeping Bucky there with him for at least a few nights in a row was enticing as well.

Bucky had dropped his bag and headed right to the shower after walking in, not even waiting for the door to fully close behind him. Steve could hardly blame him; he’d been covered in blood and sweat and borscht and God only knew what else. He’d feel a lot better after he was clean - or at least less annoyed.

Not too long after, the water in the bathroom stopped, and a moment later, Bucky wandered into the bedroom, clad in a fresh pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, hair damp and phone in one hand.

“Natasha texted me.” He held out the phone. “Reminding me that none of us have eaten yet and she’s ordered pizzas.” He shrugged. “I didn’t need reminding.”

“You never need reminding that you need to eat, Buck.” Steve chuckled and put an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “Speaking of which, did you shave?”

Steve’s cheerfulness, though, only went so far. Whether it had been in self-defense or not, Bucky had killed seven men in a horrifically brutal manner that evening. And the only part of it that seemed to have bothered Bucky was the damage Steve’s apartment had sustained and the failure of his attempt to cook them borscht.

That would need to be addressed.

Bucky scowled. “No, Steve. Who shaves at night?”

“Anyone who needs to.” Steve smiled. “So we’ve got a while before the pizzas get here.” He raised an eyebrow. “How are you doing, Buck? That was a pretty harrowing experience back there.”

“For you.” Bucky poked him lightly in the chest. “You seemed pretty shook by the whole thing.”

“And you?” Steve reached up and ruffled Bucky’s hair, though his expression remained serious. “You killed seven people with kitchenware. Aren’t you a little bit shook up? Or at least wired?”

“I’m the ‘world’s deadliest assassin’, Steve.” Bucky scowled, but all the same, he bent his head into Steve’s hand. “This is what I’ve always done. I know you don’t like that, but-“

“But this isn’t the same thing, Buck,” Steve cut in. “Number one, you’re not the Winter Soldier anymore. Number two, this wasn’t an assignment, it was self-defense. They just showed up without any warning.” He paused, his eyebrows knitting. Phil had said there was forced entry, but that the window had been opened rather than broken. “How did you know they were there, anyway?”

Bucky shrugged. “The floor creaked.”

“The…” Steve wasn’t sure he’d heard Bucky correctly at first. Then, his eyes widened. “You’re serious? What if the floor had creaked because I was there? Or Sam, or someone?”

“No.” Bucky shook his head. “You sound different. Wilson sounds different. I can hear you coming from down the hall. I knew what they were the second I heard them.”

Steve understood. And that made him hate it all the more intensely. Because the truth was that for as much as Bucky might not have been at HYDRA’s beck and call anymore, or subject to being brainwashed or mind-wiped or stuck in a freezer at Lukin’s whim, every instinct that they or the Soviets had programmed into him over those horrible seventy years wasn’t going to go away. Bucky was always going to carry their mark on him, in deeper and more indelible ways than the star he’d painted over on his bionic arm.

“Well…” Steve sighed, trying to let go of his anger at HYDRA and the Soviets for the moment and focus on Bucky. “I’m glad you did. I’m glad they didn’t get the drop on you.” He winced. “I just wish…”

What? That Bucky hadn’t killed them? They would have killed him otherwise. That they’d shown up when Steve was there alone instead? One of them might’ve gotten in a lucky shot, and then Bucky would have gone insane with rage and grief and probably gone out on his own after them. That they hadn’t shown up at all? Maybe, but what use was there in wishing that?

“I don’t know.” He sighed again. “I guess I’m just glad it’s over.”

Bucky looked at him for a moment, then sat down on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees. He looked up at Steve with an unreadable expression. “What do you really wish?”

Steve met Bucky’s eyes, and something pulled at his heart. “I want for you to be free from them. Really free, in every possible way.” He shook his head in a combination of anger and sorrow. “And it kills me that there’s only so far that’ll ever go. You didn’t deserve what they did to you, and I wish to God I could just take it all back. Make it all not true, make it not have happened.” He sighed shakily. “But I can’t, and all I can do is be sorry.”

Bucky’s mouth thinned into a line and his gaze dropped to the floor. After a moment, he said, “I know you miss… him. Me, I guess? I don’t know.” He shook his head. “The Bucky Barnes from the museum. That Bucky. The one who would’ve never forgotten his own name.”

“Oh, Bucky.” 

Steve’s heart crumpled, and he was pretty sure his face did the same. He dropped to his knees and reached out both arms for Bucky, gathering him against his chest and holding him tight while squeezing his own eyes tightly shut against the pain in his heart. Because while what Bucky had said hadn’t been completely true, it had still hurt to hear. He did miss the old Bucky, even if he knew that the old Bucky was still there somewhere, buried underneath decades of torture and brainwashing. And he hated how little Bucky thought of himself now.

“It doesn’t matter that you forgot,” Steve found himself saying into Bucky’s shoulder. “What matters is that you remember now.”

“It does matter,” Bucky murmured, breath hot against Steve’s neck and arms tight around his body. “You asked me once if I remembered the sound of the pipes where I grew up or the name of the first girl I ever kissed, and I don’t… I still don’t remember any of that.”

“You will,” Steve began, his arms tightening around Bucky and his face burrowing into the juncture of Bucky’s neck and shoulder, but Bucky went on undeterred.

“And I know that you miss him, and that he probably would’ve never killed a room full of people using kitchen utensils, or probably ever tried to make borscht, and I just… I-”

“Buck, stop.” Steve pulled back and brought both hands up to hold Bucky’s head. He brought his forehead gently to rest against Bucky’s and looked him square in the eyes. “Don’t talk about yourself like you’re not even you. You keep on saying ‘him’ like you’re a completely different person, and you and I both know that’s not true. You remember things without even trying to. You remembered breakfast at my ma’s house when we were kids. You remembered root beer barrels and Ovaltine.” 

“That hardly counts,” Bucky whispered, his hands sliding up Steve’s back until they came to rest on either side of his face. “That barely counts.”

“That wasn’t all, though. You remembered other things. Personal things.” Steve’s fingertips pressed against Bucky’s scalp, and his voice came close to breaking. “You even remembered to get me fireworks for my birthday.” He fought to keep his lip from quivering. “I know who you are, Bucky. I’ve always known.”

The look in Bucky’s eyes was indescribable. Heartbreak and devotion and something undefined, all vying for space in his gaze, and Steve had to close his eyes against it. He held Bucky’s face in his hands, and their foreheads were resting against one another, and their faces were so close that they were breathing one another’s air and their lips were practically touching. He wasn’t sure what was happening as he closed the distance between them, but he could never go wrong with Bucky, and-

“Captain Rogers?” JARVIS’ voice broke in suddenly, and Steve started violently. He whirled at the sound, his heart jackhammering in his chest. “Ms. Romanoff is at the door. With pizza. Shall I admit her?”

“Uh, yeah.” Steve suddenly felt as if he were fifteen again - a mass of awkwardness in vaguely human shape, incapable of even speaking properly. “Yeah, you should probably do that. Admit her, I mean.”

“Very good, sir.”

A moment later, Natasha called out from the living room. “Hey boys, I have three pizzas and some garlic knots. I thought you’d already be parked on the couch.”

“Yeah, well, I, uh…” Steve clambered to his feet hurriedly as Bucky sat there, wide-eyed and unmoving. He cleared his throat. “I was, uh - yeah. I’m on my way. We are.”

That snapped Bucky out of it. “Jesus, Steve.” He rolled his eyes, pushed off the bed, and walked into the living room, and Steve could hear him saying something to Natasha in Russian.

“What did you just say?” Steve felt an irrational jolt of panic and headed into the other room. “Come on, guys, don’t talk Russian in front of me.”

Still, the rolling of the eyes and the ‘Jesus, Steve’ did more than anything to convince him that Bucky was exactly who he remembered. Maybe not completely - yet - but he was still in there, and that gave Steve hope.

Bucky had taken the pizza boxes and the garlic knots and a case of soda from Natasha, who looked over at Steve and smirked. “Learn Russian, Rogers. Keep up.”

“We can get Netflix here, right?” Bucky deposited the food on the coffee table and sat back on the couch. “We can watch _Starship Troopers_. Or _Mad Max_.”

Steve sat onto the couch next to him, as close as he could get. Close enough to jostle him with his shoulder. Close enough for Bucky to probably feel his heart still racing from the adrenaline rush of Natasha walking in on them. 

Walking in on them doing what, exactly?

“Didn’t we already watch _Starship Troopers_?” He tried to sound nonchalant, hoping to hide the jitters he still felt. “The name sounds familiar.”

“Isn’t that the alien bug movie?” Natasha said from the kitchen, emerging a moment later with plates, napkins, and a pizza wheel. She sat down on the couch on the other side of Bucky.

Bucky looked at Steve. “We did not watch an alien bug movie.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Steve opened up one of the boxes and picked up the pizza wheel, immediately wishing he hadn’t. The image of Bucky pulling his own bent pizza wheel out of a HYDRA assassin’s throat and glumly trying to bend it back into shape was front-and-center in his brain for a second, but he managed to shove it aside and get back to the topic of conversation. “Those things in the _Alien_ pictures sort of looked like bugs.”

“The Chitauri invasion might count as an alien bug movie.” Off Steve’s look, Natasha shrugged. “I’m surprised they haven’t made a movie of it yet.”

“Those guys didn’t look like bugs.” Steve shook his head as he plated himself a slice of pizza and helped himself to a handful of garlic knots. “Lizards, more like. Those slimy things that crawl around under mossy rocks. Newts? Salamanders? Whatever they’re called.” He frowned. “The last thing we need is a picture about them.”

“Okay.” Bucky dragged a slice of pizza onto his plate. “No alien bug movie. We’ll watch _Mad Max_.”

Steve ate without thinking, or even really tasting the pizza and garlic knots. The shifting images of the picture on the screen, frenetic and colorful as they were, just became a blur to him. Because what he was really thinking about was Bucky. There was such a long way left for Bucky to go on his road to recovery, but nothing would be more difficult for him than to reconcile who he really was with what he’d been forced to become. 

Then again, Steve realized uncomfortably, he was also thinking about Bucky in another way - the way that made him feel unreasonably jealous of Natasha and the effortless closeness she seemed to have with Bucky. The way she could make him smile in that starstruck way, without doing anything more than flashing him a glance or talking to him in Russian. Always in Russian, no matter how much it bothered Steve to hear it and no matter how many times he asked them not to.

He hated feeling that way. Natasha wasn’t someone he wanted to feel jealous of. He loved her, and he knew that the way she felt about Bucky was genuine. And - he had to admit it, however deeply it hurt to think about it - she and Bucky both deserved the kind of happiness they obviously brought one another, after the horrorshow that had been their lives for seventy years.

He just wished that their happiness wouldn’t take Bucky away from him.

Steve lifted an arm almost without realizing it and put it around Bucky’s shoulders, leaning into him as he did. And Bucky relaxed against him without hesitation, though his eyes were fixed firmly on the screen and he was chewing on a large slice of pizza.

At some point, Natasha - who had been curled up catlike against Bucky’s other side - shifted her position and leaned back against the armrest of the sofa. She lifted both her legs, crossed them at the ankles, and deposited them across Bucky’s lap. Which meant, of course, that they wound up on Steve’s lap as well. And without thinking about it, Steve fell into a habit he’d had with Sharon. With Peggy, too, now that he thought about it. He began absently kneading at Natasha’s feet with the fingertips of his free hand. 

After a minute or two, Natasha hummed in contented approval and seemed to relax deeper into the couch cushions. “Rogers?” she sighed. “If you’re going to do that, you’d better use both hands.” 

“They always say that.” He shook his head and looked over at Bucky. “Why do they always say that?”

A lazy smile drifted across her mouth and settled there. “And you’d better not stop.”

Bucky glanced at Steve and shrugged. “You heard her.”

“You should be helping.” He unslung his arm from around Bucky’s shoulders and went to work on Natasha’s feet with both hands. They were definitely the feet of a ballet dancer, he thought as he dug his fingertips into the hard callused surface of her soles. “Doesn’t she ever ask you to do this for her?”

Natasha just barely raised an eyebrow. “We haven’t worked up to _that_ yet, Rogers. What do you take us for?”

Bucky bent his head, his hair almost but not quite hiding the smirk that flitted across his face, and began to run his fingertips up and down Natasha’s unusually bare thighs. Now that Steve thought about it, he never saw her in shorts - the better to hide weapons, most likely - but he supposed in the comfort of her own living space, she felt free to wear whatever she liked. Even if what she liked were bright pink jogging shorts with a white stripe up the side and a Nike ‘Just Do It!” t-shirt.

And the expression on her face suggested that she was definitely enjoying the massage, so Steve put a little more effort into it. He used his thumbs and the knuckles of his index fingers, and the appreciative noises she began to make were well worth the effort. So much so that he eventually worked his way up to her calves, where he found smooth skin over rock-solid muscle.

“Wow, Nat.” Steve raised an appreciative eyebrow at her. “You’ve never skipped a leg day in your life, have you?”

Natasha cracked one eye open and smiled. “Most of my life has been leg day.”

“Oh yes it has,” Bucky muttered, his hands still drifting lazily over her thighs. “Thank god.”

Steve chuckled, digging the tips of his thumbs into Natasha’s calf muscles. “It’s like massaging a pair of bowling pins. I don’t think my calves get like that even when I lift.”

“Oh my god.” Natasha’s smile widened. “You sound jealous.”

“What? No.” Steve bent his head down - mostly to hide his smile - and continued working. “I can lift a motorcycle over my head. With a bunch of girls sitting on it. Jealous? Never.”

“But can you do that with your legs?” Natasha asked, wiggling her toes for emphasis.

Bucky glanced between Steve and Natasha, a little smile drifting over his face, before he lowered his head and continued to rub his hands up and down Natasha’s thighs.

“I always lift with my legs.” Steve smiled back at Natasha, his eyes flickering over to Bucky, and kept on massaging Natasha’s legs. He’d worked his way up to the tops of her calves now, and he supposed he might as well keep going. “Haven’t you heard? Doing it the other way is bad for your back.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re such a dork, Rogers.”

He slid his hands up higher along Natasha’s legs, past her knees and to the middle of her thighs, where he found skin that was just as smooth and muscle that was just as hard as it had been on her calves. And after a moment, he also found Bucky’s hands.

For a moment, he paused, his eyes resting on Bucky’s before darting over to Natasha’s. But her eyes were closed, and he breathed a small sigh of relief at that - though he couldn’t exactly say why - and moved on.

He massaged Natasha’s thighs, his hands regularly encountering Bucky’s, and somehow it made him feel at once completely relaxed and filled with incredible tension.

“You okay there, Rogers?” Natasha murmured without opening her eyes.

“Yeah,” he smiled, his voice feeling a bit thin and shaky as it came out past the jackhammering of his heart and the quivering of practically every muscle. “I think so.”

“Good.” Her smile was playful, but her tone was relaxed. Her hands were folded gently over her chest and her eyes remained closed. “I’m glad.”

“Me too.” Steve paused as his hand came to rest against Bucky’s, and he looked over to meet Bucky’s eyes again. Gently nudged Bucky’s hand with his. “We should do this more often.”

Except what were they really doing? He wasn’t entirely sure. So he kept on moving his hands, kneading the muscle of Natasha’s legs and touching Bucky’s hands whenever he encountered them, and he probably could have gone on like that forever, except the picture ended.

That seemed to break the spell. Natasha opened her eyes, looked at the screen and then at Steve and Bucky. “Did anyone else forget we were actually watching something?”

Bucky shrugged. “I stopped paying attention somewhere between the sand they were driving around in and the other sand they were driving around in.” He licked his lips. “I liked what we were doing better.”

That brought a smile to Steve’s face like nothing else they’d been doing had. And while he was a bit disappointed when Natasha got up and began clearing away the remains of dinner, that feeling was more than balanced out by the knowledge that he’d be able to spend the night with Bucky again.

“I meant what I said,” he offered as he got up from the sofa and began to help Natasha clean up. “We really ought to do this more often.”

Natasha glanced at him on her way to the kitchen. “Which part? The massage? The movie we don’t watch? Or all the sensual touching?”

“Uh…” He felt his face flush as he sputtered. Where had that come from? And just what the hell was it supposed to mean? “I, uh… well…”

Why was he having so much trouble getting the words out?

“All of it, I guess.” No, wait, that wasn’t right. Was it? He didn’t know anymore.

Natasha wordlessly loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. And Bucky was no help either, silent on the couch behind them.

“Sensual touching?” was the best he could come up with. Even though he knew exactly what she’d meant by it, and was surprised by how unselfconscious he’d felt about it in the moment. At least as compared to how self-conscious he felt now that she’d brought it up. He supposed he’d better try for some kind of levity - lighten the mood somehow.

“And besides, I liked the movie.”

Brilliant.

Bucky chose that moment to break his silence. “Which part?”

Natasha turned and leaned against the dishwasher, a canary-eating grin spreading across her face. “Yeah, Rogers. Which part?”

“You guys are jerks,” Steve responded, trying to glower but having a devil of a time suppressing his grin. 

Okay, so he’d been caught. Since when had he been able to hide anything from Natasha anyway? Still, he had to try.

“I liked the cars.” He tried to rein in his mouth, struggling to keep it from twisting into a smile, but succeeding only in making himself look like he was having facial spasms. “The cars were neat.”

“The cars were neat,” Bucky agreed. “Especially when a bunch of them blew up on the bridge. Along with the gang members. Who also blew up.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Did that actually happen?”

Bucky scowled. “I managed to watch some of the picture.”

“I mostly remember a bunch of motorcycles,” Steve replied, putting on an exaggerated thinking face. He wished he were close enough to Bucky to put an arm around him, then mentally shrugged and simply put an arm around Natasha’s waist instead. Somehow, it felt right. “And the one guy with the long hair getting hit by a big truck. There might have been a bridge. I guess.”

Natasha leaned her head against his shoulder. “Sounds like you might have paid at least a bit of attention. And here I thought you were too busy putting your hands on everyone.”

“You make it sound like I’m a lech.” Steve chuckled and looked into the living room at Bucky, still lounging on the couch. He didn’t want to think too hard about why standing there laughing with his arm around Natasha’s waist made him feel relieved, but it did. “Hey, Buck, tell her I’m not a lech.”

“Oh, come on, don’t make James lie for you.” Natasha elbowed him gently in the side. “And anyway, we really don’t want that making the headlines, do we? Imagine if that got out? ‘Steve Rogers: America’s Sweetheart or Lecherous Nonagenarian’?”

Bucky didn’t say anything, but he had a small smile on his face as he watched the conversation unfold. 

Steve turned what he tried to make a sour glare on Natasha, but it was more of a crooked smile than anything. “This is the part where you ask me if I know how to spell ‘nonagenarian’, right? And when I do, you accuse me of combing Webster’s for Scrabble tips?” He clucked his tongue and tightened his arm around her waist, despite the elbow to his ribs. “And while we’re on the subject, how would it even make headlines unless the reporters came to you?”

Natasha rolled her eyes, but she had a genuine smile on her face. “You’re putting way too much thought into this. Way, way too much thought.” A beat, then, “You know, I brought dessert. Only I didn’t _bring it_ bring it, because I only have two hands, but it’s back in my suite, and I figured we’d need something since Steve dropped the bird’s nest cake.”

“I never saw the bird’s nest cake,” Bucky said.

Natasha shrugged. “You never saw the black bread either. We were otherwise occupied. Anyway, do you boys want dessert?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Steve fairly grinned. “Yes, I do.”

“All right.” Natasha detached herself from Steve and headed toward the door, pausing only to step into her plastic flip-flops. “Try not to get up to anything while I’m gone,” she said, and then was out the door.

“Get up to anything?” Steve snorted, shaking his head and smiling as he walked back into the living room. Back to Bucky, who still sat there on the sofa with a bemused smile on his face. “What does she think we’re going to get up to, huh?”

Bucky looked at him for a long moment. “I don’t know, Steve,” he said quietly. “What are we going to get up to?”

And suddenly the playfulness seemed to bleed away. There didn’t seem to be any place for it, not now that Natasha was gone and it was only the two of them left. Not after what had happened before Natasha had shown up at the door, not after what had almost happened.

What, exactly, had almost happened? What was he thinking?

“I don’t know,” Steve said, his voice suddenly as quiet as Bucky’s. It seemed somehow wrong to be speaking loudly just then. “I guess… I guess we could pick up where we left off. Wherever that was.”

Bucky chewed on his lip and stared silently at the floor.

The problem was, Steve thought with more than a little frustration, he didn’t know how to go back to where they’d left off any more than he knew how to define where they’d left off. He didn’t know what to do, or say, or even think. And apparently, neither did Bucky.

He stood there, frozen with indecision. Wishing he knew what to do, but unable to come up with anything. And he waited for so long that eventually JARVIS announced that Ms. Romanoff had returned, and Natasha breezed in, and his chance to do whatever he might have done was gone.

Natasha stood there for a moment, eyeing up both Steve and Bucky, before coming forward and setting a carton of ice cream and a bakery box of brownies on the coffee table. 

“Well, it’s not _ptichikie moloko_ ,” she said. “But it’s still pretty good.” She glanced at Steve. “You want to get us some bowls and spoons or are you going to stand there in foreboding silence?”

“Foreboding…?” Steve was confused for a moment, realizing only belatedly that what he’d been doing really couldn’t have been taken any other way. This made the second time that evening that Natasha had shown up and gotten in the middle of… what, exactly?

He went to fetch the bowls and spoons, hoping that the simple task would give him some time to think about it. But by the time he’d finished setting out the dishes, he was no better off than he had been before.

Natasha had taken a seat on the couch next to Bucky, and she quickly dished out a large brownie and an even larger heaping of ice cream for Steve and Bucky each and a decidedly more moderate portion for herself. Steve took a seat on her other side, on the opposite end of the couch from Bucky.

For a minute or two, they ate in what Steve supposed was foreboding silence. And then suddenly Bucky spoke up:

“The HYDRA agent I captured said he wasn’t there for me. He was there for Steve.” He clenched at his spoon. “They wanted to kill Steve.”

“Well, they couldn’t have been watching the apartment for very long.” Natasha set her spoon down. “Or they wouldn’t have made such a critical error in attacking when they did.”

Steve snorted around a mouthful of ice cream. “Makes me wonder if we’ve managed to hit HYDRA hard enough that they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. For them to have made that big a mistake, those guys couldn’t have been that professional.”

“Like I said,” Bucky spoke around a mouthful of brownie, “low-rent assassins.”

“But there is one good thing to come out of this.” Natasha looked at Steve. “If they’re targeting you specifically now, it means you’re doing something right.”

“Apparently.” Steve paused for a moment as a truly ridiculous thought came to mind - one he couldn’t help but smile as he voiced. “I picked a terrible career, then, if doing something right means people start trying to kill me.”

Bucky glowered into his ice cream bowl. “I don’t want anyone else coming for you. We should have let the one agent go, so he could go back to whoever sent them and tell them exactly what happened.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “If he didn’t just kill himself first.” She stirred her ice cream around with the spoon. “But he’ll talk. Coulson or Colonel Rhodes or Maria will break him. And if not… there are other options.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Not sure I like the sound of that, Nat.” He didn’t want to imagine what those ‘other options’ might have been, given both Natasha’s background and Bucky’s. “We’re the good guys, remember? We play by the rules, we take the high road, and that’s what separates us from them. We can’t go sinking to their level.”

Natasha exchanged a look with Bucky, and neither of them said anything, though they both ate a spoonful of ice cream and brownie.

“You’re kidding me.” Steve’s face fell. “All right, then. What ‘other options’ were you thinking of, then?”

“Oh, relax, Rogers.” Natasha leaned against Bucky and took another bite of brownie. “No one’s doing anything right now. Let’s wait and see what Coulson tells us in the morning.”

“Not doing anything right now, huh?” Steve cocked an eyebrow at Natasha, held her gaze for a moment, then chuckled and shook his head. “Not entirely convinced here, Nat. But supposing he does talk. What makes you think he’d be any more helpful than the guys we’ve used the antidote on so far?”

“Which was why we should have let him go.” Bucky bit down on his lip and stared into his bowl for a moment. “We should have let him go, and then he would’ve told his commanding officer exactly what will happen if HYDRA tries to come for you.” 

“I don’t know, Buck.” Steve took another bite of his brownie. “I don’t really know how much good that would do. Isn’t it better if they don’t find out exactly what happened? Then we’ll have the advantage, at least as far as information goes.”

“I don’t care about that kind of advantage.” Bucky looked up at Steve, his eyes hard and angry. “I don’t want them coming for you, and if they’re stupid enough to do it, they should know exactly how badly it will end for them.”

“And exactly who will do the ending?” Natasha said lightly.

“Yes.” Bucky nodded once. “That too.”

Hearing Bucky’s words tugged at something in Steve’s heart. If his being put in danger made Bucky this angry, then it was something he should avoid. Especially since he knew exactly what Bucky was capable of when he was angry, and the thought of Bucky slipping back into the persona of the Winter Soldier after everything they’d done to get him back was intolerable. More so, Steve thought with a pang, because Bucky would be doing it for him.

“Look.” He sighed. “You know I’m the first one to throw down the gauntlet or draw a line in the sand. But we heard it from the guy’s own mouth: they’re after me, not you. And I don’t want bad things happening to you because of me.”

Bucky looked at him for a moment. “You make no sense,” he finally said. “None at all.”

“No?” Steve stared back at Bucky. “You think I liked finding out that those guys tried to kill you just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time? They came to my place to kill me, Bucky, not you, but they’d have been more than happy to off you into the bargain.” He shook his head resentfully. “Nothing doing. It’s one thing to face danger out in the field. But I’m not letting you be the collateral damage when these lunatics come looking for a fight with me.”

Bucky opened his mouth to retort, but before he could, Natasha cut in.

“Boys, stop.” She looked from Steve to Bucky. “You don’t even know what you’re arguing about anymore. How do you plan to end this?”

Steve just looked at her, his mouth halfway open, trying to find a way to answer that question and coming up empty at every turn. All he could come up with (and it took him far too long) was: “Well, I guess that’s as good a way to end it as any.”

Bucky shoved a heaping spoonful of brownie into his mouth and chewed with what Steve could only think of as peevish determination. And with neither of them continuing their argument, Natasha seemed satisfied.

“Yes, I’d say that’s a good way to end it.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Provided it doesn’t start up again as soon as I walk out the door.” A small quirking of the corner of her mouth as she folded her arms and looked at the both of them. “So what about it? Are you boys going to behave yourselves?”

“Yes, Ma.” Steve grinned and instinctively dropped his elbows to protect his ribs. 

The shot never came. Natasha picked her bowl up and took a bite of ice cream and brownie, a serene expression on her face.

“Well, I’ll do my best, anyway.” Even though he knew he was playing with fire, Steve couldn’t resist the urge to needle Natasha just that little bit more. Teasing banter formed a pretty sizeable part of their friendship, and a thing like that was hard to let go of. “I’ve been told I’m not so easy to keep in line.”

Natasha just barely raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, you’re pretty feisty for a nonagenarian. The hippest senior in the retirement home.”

Bucky snorted. Ate more ice cream.

“See, I don’t know why you keep coming back to how old I am.” Steve chuckled and looked back over at Natasha. “You’re not exactly a rosy-cheeked debutante either, you know.”

Natasha set her bowl down and stretched her arms over her head. “However old I’m am, I’m not as old as you, Rogers. I’m the youngest senior in this little retirement home, it looks like.”

Bucky looked at her thoughtfully. “So I robbed the cradle?”

“Oh yes.” Natasha smirked. “We’re a real May/December romance right here.” She poked Steve lightly in the arm. “May/December and… whatever this guy counts as.”

“July.” Steve returned the smirk easily. “July fourth, to be exact. Best time of the year.”

It hadn’t escaped him, though, that Natasha had amended her description of her romance with Bucky to include him as well, and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. It might have been a slip of the tongue, but Natasha didn’t often make those. Or maybe she hadn’t intended it to mean anything more than Steve’s presence in the room just then.

Was he overthinking things? He was probably overthinking things.

“Anyway, don’t change the subject.” Steve tried not to sound flustered. “Bucky’s half a year older than I am.”

“And that makes all the difference. Clearly.” Buck shook his head. “You’re a punk.”

It was strange how the littlest things could get Steve choked up. Except while it might have been a small word, it definitely wasn’t a small implication. Not any more than Bucky telling him he’d gotten him fireworks for his birthday had been a little thing. They’d had that bit of back-and-forth since they were kids, with Bucky responding to some miscellaneous thing Steve had done or said by calling him a punk, and Steve retorting by calling Bucky a jerk. And to have him remember it, and say it so naturally, did more to light the fire of hope in Steve’s heart than all the therapy sessions and memory walks that had happened so far.

“Jerk,” he responded past the lump in his throat.

“You’re such a sap,” Natasha said almost immediately, though a smile played on her lips. She pushed off the couch and stood up. “And on that note, I’m going to bed.” 

Bucky murmured something in Russian, and Natasha reached out and stroked his hair. He leaned into her touch, his lips just grazing her palm before she pulled her hand away. 

She looked at Steve for a moment. “Try not to do anything that would give you angst, Rogers. I know that’s hard for you, but give it a shot.” And then she turned and headed for the door, pausing to step into her flip-flops before ducking out. “Good night, boys.”

As the door shut behind her, Steve let out a lengthy sigh. He wasn’t sure what she’d been warning him about - what could he possibly do that would give him angst? - but he knew her heart was in the right place. For both him and Bucky, he realized, though she showed it in different ways.

“I’m beat,” he said aloud, suddenly feeling the full extent of it. The events of the evening had put him into a state of high alert that had left him pretty drained following dinner. All he wanted to do now was crawl into bed and wait to hear from Phil and Tony that he and Bucky could go back home.

“C’mon, Buck.” He got to his feet and stretched. “Let’s go to bed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting sticky up in here. And as always, comments, feedback, and kudos are what makes fanfic authors want to keep going. So feed the author!


	22. Hotel Ukraine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky wished he had been able to save the borscht. They would never even know if he had done it right or fucked it up, and he had been so goddamn careful about the whole stupid recipe._
> 
> _It wasn’t right._
> 
> _It wasn’t right that Steve and Natasha couldn’t have a nice (or possibly awful) meal in peace. Wasn’t right that Steve’s kitchen had been destroyed because HYDRA wanted him dead and that he couldn’t stay in his own house now._
> 
> _All because of HYDRA._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If they're ["speaking like this,"], they are speaking in Russian.

**Avengers Tower**  
**same evening**

Steve did exactly as he said he was going to do. He brushed his teeth and crawled into bed, waited for Bucky to climb in next to him so they could entangle themselves around each other, and then murmured “Good night, Bucky,” and promptly drifted off to sleep.

Bucky lay there awake for what felt like hours.

He had too many thoughts crashing around in his head, and he didn’t know how to even begin untangling them. Or even which one took priority. HYDRA had dropped into the apartment. HYDRA had come to kill Steve. Steve and Bucky had almost kissed. (Probably? Maybe? He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened there.) But Bucky and Natasha were sleeping together. Steve had said they could get back to whatever they had been doing, but neither of them could put a name to whatever that had been. Natasha had pointed out that Steve was involved in their May/December romance, but then warned Steve not to do anything that would cause him angst.

Therapy with Dr. Levitt was two days away, and three days away with Darien Nash. No help there. 

He wished he could call Wanda, but it was late and she was probably sleeping, and anyway, what would he say to her?

The hours crawled by. 

Bucky stared at the ceiling. At some point, he got up and went into the living room, only it wasn’t _their_ living room. It wasn’t his home with Steve in Brooklyn. It was just an undecorated living room, the same style as the one Natasha had, only it looked even less lived in than hers. He went into the kitchen, but there was nothing in the fridge. They had eaten all the pizza and the brownies and the ice cream, and they had gotten there so quickly that they had no other food.

He stood there for a moment, then filled a glass with water from the fancy, high tech fridge that would probably talk to him if he wanted it to.

He didn’t want it to.

“You all right, Bucky?” Steve’s voice came from behind him, though he didn’t turn to look. He just let Steve walk up behind him and rest a hand on his right shoulder. “I guess neither of us could sleep too well, huh?”

Bucky took a long sip of water. “We have no food. All we have is water.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” A laugh burst out of Steve’s mouth. “You’re hungry again?”

Bucky scowled, though Steve couldn’t see it. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Another sip of water. “Doesn’t matter though, does it?”

He wished he had been able to save the borscht. They would never even know if he had done it right or fucked it up, and he had been so goddamn careful about the whole stupid recipe.

It wasn’t right.

It wasn’t right that Steve and Natasha couldn’t have a nice (or possibly awful) meal in peace. Wasn’t right that Steve’s kitchen had been destroyed because HYDRA wanted him dead and that he couldn’t stay in his own house now.

All because of HYDRA.

They weren’t taking care of them fast enough. 

Steve’s other hand came to rest on Bucky’s left shoulder, at the spot where his metal arm met the flesh of his torso. “Come on, Buck.” Steve took a step closer, and his voice was right behind Bucky’s head now. “Let’s go back to bed, and in the morning we can jog to one of your pancake houses. All right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Bucky found himself repeating peevishly, only he wasn’t angry at Steve. He wasn’t even angry at himself.

Maybe.

“Hey.” Steve was suddenly in front of him, a look of deep concern on his face. “You’re still upset about what happened at my place?” He shook his head. “Bucky, come on. That wasn’t your fault. The guy even said you had nothing to do with it; they were there for me.”

Bucky scowled. “I didn’t say anything, Steve.”

“No.” Steve raised an eyebrow and folded his arms. “But the look on your face did.”

“You’re looking at me now.” Bucky’s scowl deepened. “You weren’t looking at me before. You know nothing.”

“Ouch.” Steve looked anything but hurt. In fact, the hint of a smile seemed to appear at the corners of his eyes and mouth. “So what should I know, then?”

“I…”

The thread of the conversation seemed to slip away, and Bucky was left with an unsatisfying glass of water and Steve, looking at him with amused eyes.

“I don’t know.” He took a step and closed the gap between them, leaning his forehead gently against Steve’s. “It’s been a long day and I can’t stop thinking about all of it and I can’t sleep and I don’t like this empty apartment now that it’s quiet and dark.”

“Yeah, I know.” Steve sighed and leaned his forehead back against Bucky’s. “I don’t like staying here either, but it’s all we’ve got right now. I promise, we’ll go back home as soon as everything’s repaired. In the meantime -”

“Priority alert, Captain Rogers.” Steve and Bucky both jumped as JARVIS’ voice cut in. “You have a message coming in from Deputy Director Hill.”

“Go ahead,” Steve said, and Bucky stepped away right as Hill appeared on a screen that Bucky had not been aware of two seconds beforehand, right on the kitchen wall. 

The place was too high tech to be home.

“Captain Rogers,” Hill said, “you’ll want to come up to the Helicarrier. The operative that Barnes apprehended talked. Take a look at this.”

Hill was replaced on screen by video footage of Agent Coulson sitting at a table with the operative. A cup of water and a box of donuts sat on the table between them.

“They’re all meeting - Lascombe, Sarkissian. Others,” the operative was saying in an exhausted voice. “All of HYDRA high command.”

“And where are they meeting?” Coulson asked calmly. “When?” 

The operative sighed. Waited a beat. “In Kyiv. Tomorrow. All of them.”

The General.

The glass shattered in Bucky’s metal hand. 

Hill came back on screen, but Bucky had stopped paying attention to whatever she was saying. He caught the end of it, enough to know that she was sending a Quinjet down, and then the screen went dark.

“This is it, Buck.” Steve’s voice was full of determination, as it always seemed to be when they were getting ready for a mission, but there was excitement there as well. “If we can nail that meeting, we’ll be able to put HYDRA down for good. And if Lukin’s there…”

Bucky deposited some of the glass shards into the sink. “I’m going to wake up Natasha.”

An hour later, the entire team was assembled around the map table in the strategy room aboard the Helicarrier. Steve was standing at the head of the table in full uniform.

“All right, team, listen up.” Steve leaned forward and braced himself with his knuckles on the table. “HYDRA high command is convening in Kyiv tomorrow. If we can manage to hit that meeting hard, with everything we’ve got, we stand a damn good chance of wiping them out for good.” He glanced around the table as if for emphasis. “Now, Deputy Director Hill has been coordinating with SBU - that’s the Ukrainian national security bureau - and they’re basically putting everything else they’ve got on hold to help us out here. They’ve got a short list for possible locations of the meeting, and we’re going to help them make it shorter.”

The rest of the preliminary briefing was short and unremarkable, and Bucky spent most of it waiting impatiently for the Quinjet to be ready. But less than ten minutes later, they were all strapped in aboard the jet, heading for Kyiv at Mach 1.5.

Steve had laid out the whole plan to them as he stood in the center of the personnel bay of the jet, hanging onto a strap with one hand. Colonel Rhodes, thanks to his armor, had a constant uplink to both SHIELD’s intel and SBU’s, which meant he would be up in the air keeping the team coordinated. Also, considering he was far and away the most heavily armed of all of them, he would need to stay mobile in order to get wherever he might be needed in a hurry. Wilson and Carol Danvers - their only other fliers - were going to stay airborne as well, so they could quickly move on anything. Agents Carter and Coulson would be on the ground working hand in glove with SBU and setting up a perimeter. Wanda, whose powers were the most versatile, would support both the ground and air teams. Steve wanted no one in, no one out. 

“And the rest of us -” Steve looked around at Natasha, Barton, and Bucky. “We’re going to go knock on some doors.” He smiled a tight smile. “And some heads, if we have to.”

“Sounds like fun.” Natasha looked very comfortable, reclining back in the seat next to Bucky with her legs crossed. She met his eyes and gave him the hint of a smile. [“But don’t do anything reckless, James.”]

Bucky knew exactly what she meant, but he had to ask the question anyway. [“Like what?”]

[“Like going off on your own after Lukin.”] Her emerald eyes locked onto his own and held them as she laid a gentle hand on the small of his back. [“Which is exactly the kind of reckless I’d expect out of you.”]

The words ‘you know nothing’ died before they could make it to his lips. He knew better than that. She’d burn him with the heat of her gaze alone. 

Steve was looking at him too, and to that, Bucky scowled and said, “What?”

“Nothing,” Steve replied with a frown. “It just looks like I’m going to have to start learning Russian.” He raised an eyebrow at Bucky. “Also, don’t do anything stupid out there.”

Natasha snorted, and Bucky rolled his eyes. 

\---

Kyiv turned out to be an unholy mess.

HYDRA knew they were coming. They must have, because from the moment Steve’s boots hit the ground, there was trouble. From amidst the crowds of what he’d thought were civilians erupted gunfire and angry shouts, and that ignited a storm of chaos. The real civilians, those who hadn’t fired and who had no clue what was happening, were screaming and running in confused terror. And the ones who’d attacked - HYDRA plants beyond any doubt - were throwing everything they had at SHIELD and the SBU.

Steve’s careful planning went straight to hell. The team was almost instantly split up to handle the chaos and prevent civilian casualties while still trying to nail the HYDRA conference. 

“If there even was a HYDRA conference,” Sharon said grimly, as she and Steve took temporary cover behind an overturned truck. 

“Don’t tell me these things.” Steve gritted his teeth in frustrated anger as he tightened his grip on the shield. Bad enough that they’d walked into an ambush, bad enough that innocent people were going to get hurt, possibly killed. Having it all happen because of bad intel would just make it worse.

Sam had taken to the air, his pararescueman’s instincts working overtime. “Steve, these guys have got some major artillery.” He twisted out of the way of a burst of gunfire. “We need to shut ‘em down so we can get the civvies out.”

Maria’s voice crackled to life in Steve’s ear. “SBU and Colonel Rhodes are working on that. Falcon and Captain Danvers should join them.”

“Roger.” Steve dive-rolled out from behind the truck, coming up into a crouch to hurl the shield at the nearest gunman in the crowd. It ricocheted off a couple of others before coming back to him. “Rhodey, what have you got on the location of HYDRA command?”

“Little busy right now,” Rhodey said through what sounded like gritted teeth. “Lemme take a rain check on that request.”

“I’ve just spoken with the SBU Chief,” Coulson said over the earpiece. “We have a list of ten possible locations, including hotels, office buildings, and private residences, spread out over the Left Bank districts of Pechersk, Obolon, and Shevchenko.”

“All right,” Steve said as he raised the shield to deflect a burst of gunfire, then flung it at the knees of the shooter. “Maria, start running the Helicarrier’s equipment on those locations, and tell me the second you turn anything up. Meanwhile, I need to know how HYDRA knew we were coming. This was a spiderweb, and we blundered right into it.”

Natasha had taken cover behind the low rim of a public fountain and popped up occasionally to pick off a HYDRA shooter with her deadly-accurate pistol shots. Sharon covered her, firing when Natasha paused to reload, so neither of them was ever vulnerable. And Bucky had just picked up a man readying a grenade launcher and hurled him bodily into the wall of a building, then turned the grenade launcher on a stubborn knot of shooters that had dug in.

Steve crouched behind the shield as debris from the grenade blast rattled against its invulnerable surface. “Maria? Tell me you’ve got something for me!”

“Get to Hotel Ukraine. It’s on…” Maria said the words slowly. “Ulitsa Institutskaya, about a six minute walk from where you are now. So you can probably make it in two.”

“How will we find it?” Sharon shouted, and Steve flinched at the sudden noise in his earpiece.

“You can’t miss it,” Maria said grimly. “Trust me.” She paused, then, “I need a different group to head the InterContinental Kyiv on…” She sighed. “Velyka Zhytomyrska.”

“Clint and I are on it,” Wanda’s voice said, over what sounded like a background of unsettling explosions. 

Steve, Bucky, Natasha, and Sharon broke into a run. Sharon and Natasha fell behind pretty quickly, but Steve and Bucky stayed neck-and-neck as they raced towards the hotel.

Maria was right, as it turned out; Hotel Ukraine was impossible to miss. The hotel was a monumental piece of imposing Soviet architecture that stood out like a Salvador Dali painting in a hall of Degas sketches. 

He realized the reference would likely be lost on everyone else.

“Hey,” Bucky said to Natasha, when she and Sharon caught up. He gestured to the hotel. “Welcome home.”

“Never let it be said that the Communists didn’t know how to do grandiose.” The derision in Natasha’s voice was audible. “It’s only counterrevolutionary when the other guy does it.”

“All right, you tools of the capitalist roaders,” Sharon said. “Going in.”

The enormous cavern of a lobby sported marble columns as thick as oak trees, a grandiose and glittering chandelier, and a broad central staircase, on which a man with a grenade launcher and several frightened hostages waited at the very top.

“Oh -” Steve didn’t get to finish his near-expletive before the shooter lifted his weapon and fired a grenade right at them. Sharon and Natasha were quick enough to dodge behind the columns, but Bucky was right out in the open. 

Steve didn’t pause to think about it - he grabbed Bucky, pulled him behind the shield with him, gritted his teeth, and braced himself.

The grenade struck the shield and exploded, knocking the both of them off their feet. Even with the shield’s vibration-absorbing ability, Steve flew spine-first into a column and slid slowly down into a dazed sitting position.

Bucky slammed into a column as well, only his metal arm impacted it first, sending chunks of marble splattering to the floor with him.

“It’s okay,” he muttered, as gunshots began to ring out across the lobby. “Column broke my fall.”

“You -” Steve shook his head and clambered awkwardly to his feet, bringing the shield up to protect himself from the gunfire. “You broke the column. And you didn’t even fall.”

They both looked up in time to see Natasha parkour her way up to the man with the grenade launcher, via the staircase, the columns, and heavy draperies, before she twisted the man in a leglock and dropped him to the carpet.

“She always did amaze me,” Bucky murmured, a small smile flitting across his lips. 

“Yeah,” Steve said, considerably impressed. “Yeah, I’m going to have to concur.”

The hostages scattered, most of them screaming and charging down the staircase, as Sharon fought against the wave of them to make it to the top. Natasha had already rendered the HYDRA shooter unconscious and restrained him with plastic zip ties. Steve spoke tersely into his communicator.

“Got hostages outbound from Hotel Ukraine, guys. Somebody pick them up and get them to safety.”

Steve and Bucky sprinted up the stairs, and for the next few minutes, it was all standard operating procedure. Clear the floor, find the hostages, send an alert out to the rest of the team.

“But where the fuck is anyone important?” Bucky said through gritted teeth, somewhere on the eighth floor, after plowing through another round of agent fodder. 

Sharon took a moment to reload her pistols. “Well, the hostages are pretty important.”

Bucky snorted. “You know what I meant.”

“There were ten possible locations.” Natasha straightened after dropping an agent to the floor. “Ten that we know of.”

“Wanda and I haven’t found anything useful at the InterContinental.” Clint’s voice broke in over the comm channel, sounding somewhat disappointed. “The rooms are nice though.”

“Very nice,” Wanda added. “We should all come back for a holiday.”

“Focus, guys.” Steve looked around uneasily. They’d found nothing so far except for the swarm of grunts - not even a hint of the higher-ups they’d been looking for. “We’ve got to figure out where the command meeting is.”

“Barton, Maximoff,” Maria said into the comm channel suddenly. “Clear out of the InterContinental and go to a private residence near the Fairmont Grand Hotel on…” She took a breath. “Naberezhno-Khreshchatytska Street.” Quickly she rattled off the rest of the address. “It’s about six blocks away, and the SBU thinks the intel is solid.”

“A private residence?” Steve’s uneasiness just about quadrupled. “If the intel’s any less solid than my shield and we go breaking into the wrong house, then we could be in for some serious trouble.”

“We’re on it,” Wanda said into his earpiece. 

“‘It’ possibly being some serious trouble,” Clint added. “We’ll get back to you on that.”

“Roger.” Steve frowned. “Be careful, guys. About a thousand things could go wrong here. Protect yourselves and each other.”

There didn’t seem to be any more HYDRA grunts. Steve was beginning to very strongly consider the idea of just calling it quits - clearing out of the hotel and looking for the HYDRA command meeting at another location - when suddenly, the hallway went completely dark. 

Steve froze in mid-step, his eyes darting around, trying to adjust to the sudden blackness. He brought the shield up reflexively, his mind playing out a dozen scenarios of ambush, none of which ended well.

So much for clearing out.

“Steve?” Sharon’s face lit up a brilliant neon blue, and as Steve’s eyes adjusted, he could see that she was holding a ChemLight. “Do you want to keep going up?”

“Those lights didn’t just turn themselves off,” Steve replied, flexing his fingers on the straps of his shield. “Somebody’s probably trying to set a trap for us.”

“So, that’s a yes on going up?” Natasha adjusted the position of her Widow’s Bites, a smirk prominent on her face.

“Of course.” Steve returned the smirk. “But stay alert.”

Then it hit him. Where was Bucky?

He looked wildly around the hallway, his heart pounding in his chest and his mind already going to all sorts of horrible places. Bucky hadn’t said a word since the lights had gone out. Had he been taken? Had he gone off on his own? Had he…

Steve turned to his right and recoiled a step in shock as he almost collided with Bucky. Relief flooded over him, mixed with surprise and embarrassment. “Bucky, damn it, you’re like a ghost.”

“That’s the point, Steve.” Bucky followed Sharon and her ChemLight down the hallway toward the stairs. “That’s the point.”

“Right.” Steve’s eyes followed Bucky down the hall as he waited for his heart rate to return to normal. He shook his head, starting after them. He’d never get used to that…

A sudden massive shockwave ripped through the hallway. Steve was blown off his feet as chunks of plaster rained down from the ceiling and thick cracks raced jaggedly up the walls. The sound of it was loud enough for Steve to feel as well as hear - a dull powerful thump like a massive Independence Day firecracker magnified a thousand times. Powerful enough to hit his sternum like a punch from a gloved boxer and reverberate through his ribs.

A bomb, he realized. Someone had set off a bomb.

He shook his head, trying to clear the ringing in his ears. The dust in the air obscured the light from Sharon’s ChemLight, and he couldn’t make out anything more than a couple of hazy shapes anyhow. He’d landed in a heap against a wall, and he must have lost the shield somewhere. He couldn’t see more than a couple of feet in front of his face, and he was too dizzy to even think about standing, and everything hurt like he’d just tried to wrestle a Sherman tank. And he had no idea where everyone else was. “What the hell just - ?”

The damaged floor gave way beneath his feet as he tried to clamber upright, and he had time for one off-balance grab at thin air before he was falling.

\---

A massive shockwave ripped through the hallway, and Bucky was blown off his feet as the walls shook and collapsed around him.

He crashed through the large window at the end of the corridor and fell several stories, slamming bodily on top of a car. The roof caved on impact, the car alarm wailed and all the airbags blew out, and for several seconds, Bucky lay there, dazed and covered in white dust, blood running into his eyes.

“Steve?” he muttered into his earpiece. He couldn’t make his body sit up yet. Couldn’t make himself move. “Natasha? Agent…?”

Carter? 

Agent Carter? 

He thought he recognized the name as belonging to someone else a long time ago, but his head hurt and his ears were ringing and his whole body ached with the force of the fall.

“Agent… Carter?” He licked his lips, tasted blood. “Steve?”

“Buck...ight where y...mage out ther...ning out…” His earpiece crackled with static and interference. The thing had probably been damaged in the blast and wouldn’t last long, but at least Steve knew he wasn’t dead.

He knew enough to know that Steve would never be able to handle that.

Off to the side somewhere, he heard a car door open and then slam shut. He turned his head with some difficulty, tried to peer through the haze of smoke and dust.

It was him.

It was _him._

The car peeled out of the driveway, past the emergency response vehicles that were pulling in.

Bucky sat up suddenly, ignoring the screaming pain in his side, ignoring the dizziness and the blood still streaming into his eyes and the ringing in his ears. He rolled off the car, was shaky enough on his feet, but it didn’t matter. He was standing. He could move. 

“Steve, it’s him.” 

He took off after the car at an unsteady run, dodging past the sudden firetruck and the ambulance that swerved to miss him and slammed into another car. 

It was _him._

\---

“Bucky?” Steve tapped his earpiece, rubbed frantically at it to try and brush the dust off, but that was the last thing he heard. And it was enough to make him nearly sick with worried fear. Enough to make him claw his way to his feet despite the throbbing pain in his back from where he’d landed on a heap of rubble. Enough to make him forgo looking for the shield in favor of looking for a way out of the broken mess of the hotel.

Bucky had said ‘it’s him’. And there was only one _him_ that Steve could think of that would get a response like that from Bucky.

“Sharon?” He called desperately into the open comm line. “Natasha? Anybody!”

“Relax, Steve.” Natasha dropped lightly down from the floor above, landing almost silently on the balls of her feet in a semi-crouch. Despite the fact that she was covered in dust, her outfit was torn in places, and blood was flowing steadily down her face from a cut high on her cheek, she seemed unperturbed. She was holding the shield in one hand, and she held it out to him while offering her other hand to support him. “You don’t look too bad.”

He laughed a laugh that was more than half a cough. “Thanks. You look like the aftermath of a bullfight.” He took the shield from her, staggering a bit as he tried to remain steady on his feet. He was grateful for the hand she’d put on his shoulder to steady him. “Where’s Sharon?”

“I don’t know yet.” Natasha glanced around her, as if expecting to see someone else. “I lost my earpiece in the blast. Where’s James?”

“He took off.” Steve looked at her with panic in his eyes and voice. “He said something over the comm about ‘it’s him’.” He reached out for Natasha, gripped her arms with both hands and felt his insides turn to ice at the thought of what was about to happen. “He must have meant Lukin, and he took off on his own, and we’ve got to find him.”

“Relax, Steve,” Natasha repeated, though this time, she didn’t sound at all relaxed and the look in her eyes was one that Steve didn’t often see in her. “We’ll find James. We’ll find Sharon. We’ll-”

She was cut off by the high pitched wail of sirens from outside. 

\---

Bucky chased the car through traffic that was clogged with ambulances and SBU vehicles that cut him off every two goddamn seconds, and if it weren’t for the situation already happening on the ground, he’d swear it had been deliberate.

The pain in his side had gotten worse, but he didn’t have time to stop and check the damage. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to push past it, and if he was moving somewhat slower than usual, he was still moving. 

But he wouldn’t let him get away.

Not after months of dead-ends and pointless raids and agent after agent poisoning themselves. Not after that phone call. Not after everything that Ms. Grey had uncovered in his memories.

He wouldn’t let him get away.

The car swerved suddenly and pulled into an underground parking garage, and Bucky followed without hesitation, ignoring the way the heavy metal garage door slammed shut in his wake. 

The car screeched to a halt in a parking space. The driver killed the motor, the doors burst open, and a handful of armed men spilled out. 

Along with the General.

Bucky had lost all his decent weapons in the explosion at the hotel. All he had left were a few pistols, including his SIG-Sauer pistol, and a pair of knives. But he’d made kills with less, and the General was right there, and the SIG-Sauer was in his hand almost before he knew it, and he was about to wipe that fucking smile right off the General’s face forever…

The General said a single word, an unfamiliar word Bucky had never heard before, and it was like a grenade had exploded inside his skull. Multicolored sparks burst before his eyes, and his whole body went limp all at once, and he crashed gracelessly to the ground.

[“You never could learn a simple lesson, could you, Soldier?”]

From the corner of his eye, Bucky could see the General’s shoes approach him. Slowly, casually, as though he had all the time in the world. And he could feel the General step deliberately on the fingers of his right hand, still stubbornly holding onto the SIG-Sauer, and reach down to pick the gun up almost delicately and lift it away.

[“You cannot harm me, Soldier.”] The General crouched down and grabbed a handful of Bucky’s hair, yanking his head up off the concrete floor of the garage and twisting it around to face him. 

Bucky opened his mouth to try to say anything, but his tongue felt heavy and the words didn’t want to come to him.

The General’s eyes almost danced. [“I would never have allowed you to come anywhere near me if you could. And now?”] He smiled a horrible smile. [“Now you belong to me again.”]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am thankful for the small, yet very supportive readership that I have. The story would not be the same without y'all. Thank you. 
> 
> As always, feedback, questions, kudos, and general squealing is greatly appreciated, warmly received, and eagerly hoped for.


	23. Compliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A smile flitted across Natasha's mouth and she leaned forward suddenly and kissed him on the cheek. “No time for that now, Rogers. Let’s go get our man back.” She began walking toward the parking lot._
> 
> _Steve followed her after a moment, unconsciously reaching up to touch his cheek where she’d kissed it and very consciously thinking that she wasn’t far off the mark about Bucky being ‘their man’._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If two Russian characters are speaking to each other, then assume they're speaking Russian.
> 
> ETA: In light of recent US events and some worried comments from the readers, I'm just going to go ahead and spoil the next chapter in the end notes. Skip the end notes if you don't want to be spoiled.

**somewhere in Kyiv**  
**early morning**

Bucky awoke to streaks of orange and gold sunrise pouring in through a crack in the heavy drapes on the far wall.

His head felt as if it were stuffed with alcohol-soaked cotton balls, his side throbbed with a dull ache, but worst of all, his left arm felt strange and tingly, as if it had fallen asleep. 

Which wasn’t possible.

He licked his lips and tried to remember. He had found the General and gone after him. And the General had done… something… to him. And then one of his men had shot Bucky in the neck with what was probably a sedative.

And then…

He looked up with wary eyes, and the General seemed to have been waiting for him to do just that.

“Well, well.” There was no mistaking the satisfaction in the General’s voice. And even if it hadn’t been clear, the look on his face drove the point home. “Back to old familiar places, aren’t we, Soldier?”

Bucky looked away, tried to focus on the room instead. Big, but empty, as if all the furniture had been cleared away. The wallpaper was a soft blue, as was the rug beneath his feet. Heavy drapes lined the far wall. At the door stood two men armed with Kalashnikov AK-12 assault rifles.

He was restrained very securely against a chair.

No.

No, no, no.

“Isn’t it familiar, Soldier?” The General’s coal-black eyes glittered like some nightmare insect’s and his horrible smile was a slash in his face. “This feeling of absolute, helpless terror?”

His eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t even kick his feet out, and no, it couldn’t be, not again, it couldn’t happen again. 

The General began to walk slowly towards him, his steps deliberate and unhurried, and the smile on his face seemed to radiate icy cold. “You know, Soldier, I’m honestly surprised that it took you this long to come after me. I thought I’d dropped enough hints into your lap that even an imbecile like you wouldn’t have had any trouble following them. But apparently there’s no underestimating your stupidity. I had to practically hold your hand the entire way.”

Despite the lingering effects of the sedative, Bucky’s breath hitched in his throat and his stomach clenched up, and for a long, awful moment, he thought he would be sick right there. 

It wasn’t supposed to have happened this way.

Not like this.

“Oh, stop it.” The General folded his arms and glared at him. “You’re not in the recalibration chair, you idiot.” He scoffed. “I don’t need the chair for what I’m about to do with you.”

Bucky said nothing to that, and the sick feeling churning in his stomach soured slowly into damp fear. He stared down into his lap and tried to focus. Tried to think clearly and not panic.

“It wasn’t easy, you know.” The General glowered at him. “When I sent those assassins after Captain America, I didn’t imagine they would succeed. But I knew he’d want to question them, so I primed them with some information I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.” 

Bucky looked up at that and found he couldn’t help himself. “Most of them didn’t live long enough to give me any valuable information.”

The General’s eyebrows knitted at that, and a look of shocked anger descended quickly over his face. He recovered quickly, though.

“So you couldn’t help but do the only thing you were ever good for.” The General sneered at him. “The one you left alive probably fell all over himself to tell you everything he knew after seeing what you’d done to his comrades.”

Bucky actually snorted at that. “No. Low-rent assassins.” The phrase tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop himself. “The sole survivor only told me he wasn’t there for me.”

This time, the dark look that came over the General’s face didn’t leave so quickly. “You mean you couldn’t even question him properly?” He spat, disgusted. “I should have known. You’re worthless for anything but killing.”

“I…” Bucky’s eyes fell back into his lap. He had knocked the poison tooth out of the would-be assassin’s mouth and then taped his mouth shut and waited for Steve and Natasha to come home so they could question him.

Because he was worthless for anything but killing.

He had always known that.

“Are you only just realizing this now?” The General sneered at him, shaking his head mockingly. “When in all your life have you ever done anything correctly except kill?”

Bucky wanted to say that he had tried to make borscht, but he had fucked that up, hadn’t he? He had sent Edible Arrangements as an apology to Steve, Natasha, and Sam, but he had needed Wanda to help him figure out what to write on the cards. And they had told him - everyone had told him - not to go off on his own after the General, and he had done it anyway.

Because thinking was for men, and he had never been more than a killer. 

“And you came here thinking you’d kill me?” The General snorted. “So tell me. What was your brilliant plan for finding me? Even with a map right to my door, you and your little band of fellow morons went crashing stupidly around the entire city. I had to get your attention in the crudest way possible.” Another snort. “By setting off a bomb right next to you and then driving right past you, practically hanging out the window and waving a flag.”

The worst part was that the General wasn’t wrong, and Bucky had nothing he could say.

The General stared at him for a long moment, arms folded, and shook his head. “Honestly, Soldier, you should thank me for bringing you here. Left to your own devices, you wouldn’t have the brains to survive at all.”

“I…” Bucky licked his lips. He had to say something. “I’ve been…”

He had to explain himself, though he couldn’t say why. The General wouldn’t care what he had been doing for the past several months. Bucky knew that. And yet, he had to justify himself. He had to make himself understood.

Hadn’t he been doing better? 

Didn’t Steve keep telling him that? In bed at night, didn’t he keep telling Bucky that he had been doing so much better lately? And Natasha must have thought so too, or they wouldn’t have done any of the things they had recently gotten up to. And Dr. Levitt said he was right at the beginning of his path to recovery.

“I’ve been doing better.”

“Is that what they’ve been telling you?” The General’s black eyes bored into him like drills. “These so-called professionals you’ve been legally obligated to entertain?” He scoffed. “They know even less than you.”

“No, I…” The argument was unraveling in front of him, faster and faster, and Bucky didn’t know how to pick it back up. “I have therapists and… and I…”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard about that.” The General’s smile was a hideous, mocking thing. “Your mind is worth so little that you were declared mentally incompetent. Forced to be treated by these therapists. Forced to live with Captain America because you couldn’t be trusted to undertake even the most basic of tasks yourself.” He laughed. “And you say you’re doing better? Better than what?”

The energy seemed to drain out of Bucky all at once, and he could do nothing to stop it, sagging limply into his seat. “I wanted to,” he said quietly. “I wanted to be there. With him. I wanted to be there.”

“You wanted to be there.” The General said it in a mocking voice, sneering down at him with folded arms and obvious contempt. “When has it ever mattered what you want, Soldier? You belong to me!”

Suddenly, the General was close to him. Very close.

“You belong to me, Soldier,” he repeated, leaning in and hissing in a harsh whisper. “This little interlude of yours - pretending to be a man and play-acting at a man’s life - all of that is over, is that understood?”

Bucky licked his lips. Tried to pull his thoughts back together: Steve’s birthday party and his two nights of passion with Natasha and whatever he and Steve had almost gotten up to… Had that only been last night? All of those things were real, weren’t they? They mattered. He hadn’t been play-acting.

“I haven’t been pretending.” He looked up at the General. “It’s all been real.”

“You sound like a child.” The General spat the words out mockingly. Condescendingly. “Stubbornly insisting that your imaginary friends aren’t imaginary at all, that the elaborate fantasy you’ve constructed in your own head supersedes basic reality.” 

The words were out of his mouth before he could consider them. “Why are you doing this?” He had never even thought to ask that before.

“Why?” The General looked incredulous for a moment, before the anger flooded back into his face twice as strong as it had been before. “Why? I might just as well ask why you decided to turn your back on everything you are. On everything I made you, on everything you’ve been responsible for your entire worthless life!”

He leaned in closer, sneering in Bucky’s face. “Did you think you were a man, is that it? Did Captain America and that traitor Romanoff convince you that you could ever be anything more than the killing machine you were designed to be? Were you thinking you could settle down into a nice comfortable life with them and never have to reckon with any of it again? That you would never have to reckon with me?”

Bucky was silent for a long moment, and then he decided to just speak the truth. There had never been any point in lying to the General anyway.

“I knew I couldn’t turn my back on it forever,” he said quietly. “I’ve always known. And I know the things that I did.” He looked up at the General. “But everyone else knows, too.”

“You tried to dissuade me with that on the phone as well, Soldier.” Lukin’s sneer seemed to intensify. “But in case you’ve forgotten, let me remind you of just how short people’s attention spans really are these days. Do you honestly think that anyone in the world would remember you after you’ve been on ice for five or ten years?” He snorted. “More likely they’d be consumed by the latest celebrity marriage or mobile phone update. And you would be free to resume your role as the world’s deadliest assassin. Under my sole control, naturally.”

Stupidly, helplessly, Bucky heard himself saying, “I was in prison. There was a trial. The court said-”

“The court’s word means nothing!” The General’s voice rang sharply in his ears from so close. “The only law you ever need to concern yourself with is my word, Soldier. And you will obey my word as if it were the word of God!”

Bucky looked up suddenly at that. “No.”

The General had said that to him once before. When he had found out about his relationship with Natasha and ordered Bucky - only he had been the soldier then - never to see her again. And Bucky had tried to murder him for it.

_Burn it out of him._

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.” The General’s eyes narrowed, glinting like black diamonds. “Oh yes, you will. And the more you resist, the worse I’ll make you hurt your so-called friends.”

Bucky set his jaw. Glared at him. “I’ll put a bullet in my head first.”

“Oh, and I’m sure your friends would think that was a wonderfully heroic and selfless gesture.” The General laughed. “Do you think about the words you say before you let them spill out of your mouth?”

“Tell the doctor.” Bucky was shaking with rage or fear. Probably both. He spoke through gritted teeth. “Tell the doctor what I said, and see if he understands.”

“Tell him yourself.” The General’s face contorted into a glower. “He ran away like a pathetic scared rat and took shelter with SHIELD. So when I send you to kill him, perhaps I’ll allow you to let him explain himself to you first.”

Bucky stared at him in uncomprehending shock. 

No one had told him. Natasha hadn’t told him. _Steve_ hadn’t told him.

It couldn’t be true.

He licked his lips. Hesitated. “You’re lying.”

“Oh, I see.” The General’s glower melted and became a sly smile, his eyes glinting again. “No one told you, did they?” He laughed softly, mockingly. “I wonder why. Was it because they knew they couldn’t trust you not to try to kill him yourself, when they still needed him?”

“You’re lying,” Bucky repeated, shaking his head and hating how pathetic and stupid he sounded. “Why would they need him? You’re lying.”

“Lying?” The General laughed again, louder this time, as though he’d heard something genuinely funny. “Why would I need to lie about this? I doubt I’m even inventive enough to have come up with it in my head.” He shook his head, still laughing. “So Captain America, after he did everything to convince you he was the only friend you’d ever have in this world, hid something of this magnitude from you for his own selfish reasons. A cheaply written television drama couldn’t have done it any more ham-handedly.”

“He wouldn’t have,” Bucky heard himself say hollowly. Numbly. 

“See for yourself, then.” The General raised an eyebrow. “Once I’ve given you your orders, go to Avengers Tower and talk to Rodchenko yourself.” He snorted derisively. “Or continue to lie to yourself. Another sign of your weak-mindedness.”

Bucky said nothing. He didn’t know what else he could say.

“Nothing else to say, then?” The General smiled at him smugly. “Not even going to muster a last bit of defiance? Not that it would have done you any good, mind you.” He seemed to consider for a moment. “Perhaps you’re learning after all. Shall we get on with it, then?”

“Get on with what?” Bucky looked at him. “You don’t have the chair. You don’t have the doctor. Are you going to kill me then?”

He almost hoped the answer was yes. Better to die than to be turned against Steve and Natasha again.

The General responded with a burst of laughter. “Don’t be ridiculous, Soldier. Would I go through all this trouble just to kill you? I could just as easily have put a hole in your skull after giving you the shutdown command in the parking garage.” He smiled darkly. “No, Soldier. I still control more of your mind than you ever could have imagined. Enough of it to send you tumbling to the ground with a single word, and enough of it to set you back on your proper course without that fool Rodchenko’s help.”

Damp fear once again settled into Bucky’s stomach. “What are you talking about?”

“Unfortunately, it’s merely a stopgap measure.” The General looked somewhat annoyed. “But it will do for the time being.” He smiled again, ghoulishly. “And you’ll go to the chair willingly afterwards.”

Bucky would put a bullet in his head first. They couldn’t stop him from doing that, no matter what the General said.

A look of savage anticipation settled onto the General’s face, and he lowered his voice. “Longing.”

“I’m going to kill you one day,” Bucky said quietly.

The General only smiled in response. “Rusted,” he said deliberately. Relishing each syllable. “Seventeen.”

The terror that twisted in Bucky’s stomach traveled upward and clenched at his heart. “What are you doing?”

“Daybreak.” The General’s voice grew more intense, as did the look on his face. “Furnace.”

“Stop it.” Something ugly and dark grasped at Bucky’s head, sharp tendrils digging slowly into his mind. “Stop…”

“Nine.” Unholy glee twisted the General’s face into a mockery of happiness. “Benign.” 

Bucky’s whole body vibrated with tremors. He clenched his right hand until the fingernails dug into the soft flesh of his palm, and then further still until he drew blood. His left arm was still dead and useless. 

“Stop it.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Stop it, stop it.”

The General seemed to savor the next word. “Homecoming.”

Bucky screamed, ugly and incomprehensible, until his throat was raw with the effort. And yet… something whispered at the back of his mind to just let go. 

Stop fighting it.

Just let go…

“One,” the General said with satisfaction, his black eyes seeming to flame for an instant as his voice swelled to a crescendo.

Bucky… 

Was that his name?

He stared down at his lap, eyes wide, breathing heavily. His fingers loosened, though his fingertips felt slick with blood.

How had that happened?

It didn’t matter…

He needed to let go...

“Freight car.”

The soldier looked down at the floor.

Waiting for his orders.

“There now.” The General sounded satisfied. Pleased. “How do you feel now, Soldier?”

The soldier looked up into the eyes of his commanding officer. “Ready to comply.”

\---

The cords stood out in Steve’s neck as he heaved and strained at a massive chunk of concrete. Beside him, Natasha had jammed a long piece of steel rebar underneath it and was pulling at the makeshift lever with all her might. Around them, a swarm of local law enforcement officers, firefighters, and rescue workers were busily trying to clear the rubble of the explosion - the rubble under which Sharon had been buried.

Straining with all his might, Steve felt his legs quiver as he lifted the huge piece of concrete a bare few inches off the ground - far enough for Natasha to wedge the rebar completely underneath it and push it aside. Smaller chunks, more easily cleared, were flung aside by the rescue workers. And out of nowhere, Sam dropped out of the sky with a terrible look on his face.

“All right.” He landed light-footed atop what had been a wall, but was now just a pile of concrete chunks and torn wallpaper. “Where was she?”

“Same floor as us,” Steve gasped as he looked for a place to grasp the next big chunk of stone. “But I fell through the floor after the explosion, and Natasha lost her communicator, and I can only guess where Sharon might have wound up.”

“She had a ChemLight.” Natasha grunted as she braced her lower back against a still-intact column and her heels against another piece of crushed masonry. The rubble moved aside slowly. “A blue one.”

“Okay.” Sam’s mouth thinned into a hard line. “Blue ChemLight.” A second later, he took off, disappearing into the upper levels of what remained of the hotel.

Steve watched him go, then returned to the grueling work of shifting the biggest pieces of debris. If Sharon had been buried underneath it, the only prayer she had of survival was for air to be able to get down to her. And Steve wasn’t going to move from where he was until they’d found her. One way or the other.

He wouldn’t let himself think too hard about that. But there was something else on his mind.

“Once Sharon’s safe,” he grunted to Natasha as he strained to lift the remnants of a column, “we’ve got to find Bucky.”

The thought of Bucky in Lukin’s hands made him go ice-cold through the center of his torso. Ice-cold, and at the same time white-hot with anger. After all the hard work, the fear, the pain, the blood and sweat and tears and sleepless nights that had gone into Bucky’s recovery, everything might be swept away in a few minutes. And the worst part was that Steve didn’t even know who he was angrier at - Lukin, for doing the horrible things he was going to do to Bucky, or Bucky, for not listening to the simplest and most basic warning they’d all tried to give him.

The very thought of losing Bucky again made him nauseous, and he poured all his strength into moving the column. He heaved upwards, hard enough to send white lines of pain down his spine and arms and the backs of his legs, but he didn’t stop. He wanted the pain to drive out the fear, and until it did, he wouldn’t let himself stop.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He’d moved a few of the biggest pieces of rubble and was starting on another when Sam dropped out of the sky again, a bruised and battered, but very much alive Sharon in his arms.

“Look who I found.” Sam touched down gently on a clear spot of floor and was near instantly surrounded by paramedics, two of them bearing a stretcher. 

“I want my ChemLight back,” Sharon said weakly, and Sam kissed her on the forehead as he laid her out on the stretcher. 

“Go, babe.” He held her hand for a moment. “I’ll get you another ChemLight. Two ChemLights, even. You choose the colors.”

“Green.” The paramedics began to carry Sharon away. “Green and red. Like old school lightsabers.”

“Old school lightsabers.” Sam nodded. “Gotcha.”

“Nerd,” Natasha said, coming up alongside Sam, a relieved smile on her face. 

“A massive one,” Steve offered, relief and pain washing over him in equal amounts. He leaned against the remains of a wall for support. “Did I ever tell you she was the one who got me to sit down and watch those movies when I first came back?”

“No, but save the story for movie night,” Maria said into all of their ears suddenly. “Falcon, I need you with Colonel Rhodes and Captain Marvel. I’ve got another address, and the intel is hot.” 

Quickly she rattled off the coordinates, and a second later, with a brief “duty calls,” Sam took off into the sky. 

“Captain Rogers,” Maria started, but Steve broke in before she could go any further. Now that Sharon was safe, he could focus on the other high-priority rescue effort.

“I’m going after Bucky,” he said flatly. “He took off after Lukin, or after someone he thought would lead him to Lukin, and he probably walked into a trap.” He felt an almost irrational flare of anger, but forced it down. There would be time enough for that later. “Natasha and I are going to find him and bring him back.”

Maria didn’t argue with him. All she said was, “Keep me posted.”

Steve turned back to Natasha, his mouth set in a grim line of determination against the fear gripping his heart and the dull ache clawing at his body. “Let’s start with his phone. If we track the GPS signal-”

“At best, we’d be led directly to the bottom of the Dnirpro River.” Natasha folded her arms. “At worst, another bomb.”

“Have you got a better idea?” Steve folded his arms right back at her.

“Of course I do.” She reached into a pouch on her belt and pulled out what appeared to be a small, yet flashy looking GPS logger. “He’s wearing a tracking device.” She looked at him for a moment. “A tracking device that he’s completely unaware of.”

Steve stared at the device for a long moment, his mouth slightly open and his mind scrambling to keep up. Finally, he tore his eyes from the logger and dragged his brain back into focus.

“You knew,” he said, his eyes firmly on hers. It wasn’t a question. “You knew he was going to try something like this.”

She shrugged. “You mad, bro?”

“A bit.” He scowled at her briefly, but couldn’t keep it up. “Not enough to keep me from using it to get him back, though.” He gestured towards the nearby parking lot, where there were bound to be some undamaged vehicles for them to borrow. “Let’s find some wheels, and you can tell me on the way how this tracking device got to be on him.” He raised an eyebrow. “And why you’re the only one who knew about it.”

A smile flitted across her mouth and she leaned forward suddenly and kissed him on the cheek. “No time for that now, Rogers. Let’s go get our man back.” She began walking toward the parking lot. 

Steve followed her after a moment, unconsciously reaching up to touch his cheek where she’d kissed it and very consciously thinking that she wasn’t far off the mark about Bucky being ‘their man’. 

“Besides,” she called over her shoulder, “I want to watch you ‘borrow’ another car.”

It didn’t take him long to find a decent bike, and surprisingly (and thankfully) there wasn’t much difference between hotwiring it and hotwiring a car. In fact, he managed it in record time. And almost before he knew it, Natasha had hopped on the back and started giving him directions.

“They’re on the Right Bank,” Natasha shouted into the wind. “Across the river in the Desna district. Completely outside of Coulson’s area of intel.” She snorted. “Lukin must’ve known we were coming. He planned for this.”

“Yeah, he’s a real smart guy, isn’t he.” 

Steve’s hands clenched on the handlebars as the thought of beating Lukin within an inch of his miserable life drifted tantalizingly across his mind. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of justice that Lukin really deserved, and maybe it wasn’t what he himself would have advocated for in any other case, but there was no denying the satisfaction it would bring him to watch the haughty, arrogant bully he’d seen lord power over Bucky in those memory walks reduced to a whimpering heap. To watch him cower and beg when his money and political clout were useless. 

“I really want to be there when his smarts run out.”

“I know you do, so head northeast,” Natasha directed. “We’re going into the Lisovyi section of Desna.”

Which turned out to be a sprawling, yet tree lined residential area of massive apartment blocks, a smattering of schools, and a giant university. Natasha continued to feed him directions, finally leading him to Volhogradska Square, a giant parkland made up of several massive, multi-story apartment blocks, each one indistinguishable from the next.

“What is this, some kind of Ukrainian suburb?” Steve brought the bike around a corner sharply, the tires and brakes screeching as he fought to control the turn. “Is he in one of these buildings?”

“That’s exactly what this is, and yes.” A beat, then, “Probably.”

“Probably?” The bike swerved to a halt, the back tire skidding around as Steve dug in his heels. “Isn’t that thing working properly? Where do we need to go?”

“Relax,” she murmured, as they drove past a few of the blocks, Steve’s mind and body doing anything but relaxing. She tapped him on the shoulder suddenly. “Right here.”

It was the work of a few moments to stash the bike against a side of one of the smaller buildings, a side well-obscured by trees and not visible from the street. But the street wasn’t deserted by any means. The sun was now up, and people were beginning to trickle out of the buildings, on their way to work or school.

Steve didn’t relish the idea of Captain America being seen breaking into a private apartment building in a foreign country.

“We need a way in, Nat.” He looked at her uneasily. “Something quiet and unobtrusive. What have you got?”

Natasha scanned the buildings, eyes narrowed. “Let’s get in through the service door and then take the stairs until the tracker signals the floor.” She raised an eyebrow. “Hope you haven’t been skipping leg day, Rogers.”

“Compared to you?” Steve shot her back a raised eyebrow of his own, coupled with a wry smile. “Just don’t show me up too badly.” 

He remembered his own ‘leg day’ comment, as well as the context. It seemed so far away now, the three of them lounging on the sofa and carelessly flopping against one another. As much as he tried to block it out, there was a horribly insidious voice in his mind that told him those days were gone. That Bucky had walked into the trap they’d all warned him against, that Lukin would outsmart them at every turn, and that they’d never see him again. Or - worse yet - they’d see him one last time, and by the time they did see him, it would be too late.

He fought down the shudder of terrified, impotent rage that threatened to take hold of him and never let go, and clenched his jaw in stubborn refusal to submit. He’d never given up on Bucky before. Not when he’d had no one else to turn to as a kid, not when Bucky’s unit had been captured and everybody had written them off for dead, not when they’d fought on the Helicarrier and he’d put his very life on the line to get Bucky to remember himself, and not any of the dozen times since then that things had gotten dire. And God damn it, he wasn’t going to give up on him now, when it may have mattered more than ever before.

He strode with renewed determination towards the service door and slammed the edge of the shield into the lock holding it closed. The lock shattered and he shoved the door open, eyes narrowed and mind focused.

He just barely remembered to hold the door open for Natasha.

Thankfully, there were no other locked doors - or any security measures whatsoever - to get in their way as they moved up the stairs. Steve ran hard up the first several flights, taking the stairs two at a time. He’d imagined he would leave Natasha in the dust, just as he’d done with Sam when they’d jogged around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, but to his astonishment - and maybe a bit of admiration as well - she not only kept pace with him, but seemed to almost float up the stairs with hardly any effort.

He could see why Bucky was so fond of saying she amazed him.

On the tenth floor, Natasha held an arm out, GPS logger in hand. “Here.”

Steve booted the door open and barreled out into the hallway, shield up and ready to intercept whoever or whatever might have been standing between him and Bucky, but the hallway was empty. 

Empty enough to almost make him stumble to a halt and reconsider his plan, but his momentum was too strong both in body and in mind. So he kept moving, down the length of the hallway towards the door at the end, and when he reached it and slammed his boot heel into it at full tilt, he had a single split second to feel the shock and horror slam into him as the door gave way. 

Bucky stood there, that horrible empty look in his eyes again, and he raised the pistol in his hand and fired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILER: This is not going to be a retread of _Project Regenesis_. Bucky is rescued by Steve and Natasha, and there is no lasting damage. He doesn't lose his memories again. What happens to him serves as an object lesson on why he really ought to listen to the people who care for him, but other than that, I promise he'll be fine.
> 
> So I hope y'all keep reading. :)
> 
> As always, feedback is warmly welcomed and hoped for.


	24. Cognitive Recalibration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“First,” Natasha was saying, “you need to answer the question. What’s the last thing you remember?”_
> 
> _A frown skittered across Bucky’s mouth and settled there. “There was… a bomb. And then I was in a… a parking garage.” He chewed on his lip and looked at Steve. “And you… You hit me with your shield… I think.”_
> 
> _“Yeah, I did.” Steve looked back over at Natasha, asking her a silent question with his eyes: Could they let him up now?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DEAR READERS: I'm sorry that the last chapter was so upsetting to so many. On the one hand, I realize this means that the story is connecting with readers on a very visceral level and that you all care about Bucky's recovery and happiness. On the other, I realize that with the US political situation being what it is right now, we come to read fanfic as escapism. While I intended the previous chapter to provide dramatic tension and narrative jolt, it seemed to be a matter of bad timing and too much. 
> 
> So I want to let everyone know that Bucky WILL be okay. This story is, at its core, a romance and recovery narrative. As the tagline says, "a story of love, redemption, and pancakes." Bucky will go forward in his recovery, and though there may be bumps, he won't go backward. 
> 
> I hope you continue to come along for the ride. - FrostyEmma
> 
> ...
> 
> If they're ["speaking like this,"] then they are speaking in Russian.

**Kyiv**  
**right then**

Steve brought the shield up instinctively, the bullet from Bucky’s pistol making a high-pitched _spang!_ as it ricocheted off, and he had no time to form a plan of action or even a coherent thought before Bucky darted in and gripped the edge of the shield with his metal hand.

Even with both hands on the straps of the shield, Steve’s strength was no match for Bucky’s cybernetic limb. He couldn’t do a thing to stop Bucky from wrenching the shield aside and shoving the pistol forward again, trying to get in a close shot. 

Only Steve’s heightened reflexes saved him; he was able to twist aside at the last millisecond and avoid the bullet. And Bucky had made the tactical error of getting too close.

Steve’s right hand scooped under Bucky’s left arm. His left hand gripped Bucky’s right wrist, keeping the gun pointed well away from him. He quickly pivoted his hips and shifted his upper body, and Bucky sailed over his hip and landed with a loud thud on the floor. 

The gun clattered away.

Bucky didn’t stay down for more than a fraction of a second. 

Quick as a snake, he reversed the grip Steve still had on his right wrist so that he now held onto Steve, pulling him down and off balance. Still on his back on the floor, he lashed out with a devastating kick to Steve’s unprotected side. 

Steve grunted in pain as Bucky regained his feet and snapped out another fast kick, this one directed at his head. He got his forearm up in time to block it, but Bucky was already flicking out a knife, and Steve knew how bad it was likely to get from there.

Fortunately, he wasn’t alone.

From off to the side, Natasha fired a dart from her Widow’s Bite - a dart that would have sent him right down in a tranquilized heap - but Bucky pivoted on the balls of his feet and slapped the dart away with the palm of his metal hand. 

Steve lunged forward, only to have the wind knocked out of him as Bucky folded him in half with a spinning kick to the pit of the stomach. As he brought the shield up again and desperately sucked air, he saw Bucky leap towards Natasha with some kind of twisting aerial cartwheel, lashing out with both boots as he came down. 

Natasha was ready for the attack, though, and dropped into a low crouch, spinning as she did and slicing Bucky’s feet out from under him with a sweeping kick. 

The knife went skittering away somewhere, but Bucky rolled as he hit the ground and caught the kick Natasha had aimed at his face with his metal hand. 

Natasha let out a cry of pain as Bucky squeezed her ankle savagely in a grip meant to crush bone, but then rolled free as Steve flung the shield as hard as he could at Bucky’s back. Bucky sensed it coming, of course, and dive-rolled out of the way, but he’d had to release his grip on Natasha to do it. 

And as he regained his feet, Steve plowed forward with a lunging heel kick that hit Bucky right in the stomach and drove him back several steps. 

But as Steve leapt forward again to try and land another kick, Bucky somehow sectored off to the side and swung his metal hand down in a short, vicious arc that met Steve’s knee with an impact that sent a white-hot spike of agony lancing through Steve’s entire leg. 

Steve crumpled on a leg that wouldn’t support his weight anymore.

Bucky raised his metal arm again for a killing blow, then staggered suddenly as Natasha leaped onto his shoulders and pulled a thin garrotte wire out of her Widow’s Bite. Had Bucky not gotten the fingers of his right hand between his throat and the wire, Natasha would have choked him unconscious in six seconds flat. 

He flailed helplessly upwards with clubbing blows of his metal hand, but Natasha stayed mounted on his shoulders like some sort of demented rodeo rider.

“Steve!” she called out desperately. “Cognitive recalibration!”

Steve had heard the phrase before, and he knew exactly what she wanted him to do. He willed his leg to support his weight, gripped the edge of the shield with both hands, and tensed for the right moment. 

Natasha swung herself off of Bucky’s shoulders and into a complicated whirling motion around his body, building up terrific centrifugal force until her feet touched the ground and she grabbed hold of Bucky’s wrist and twisted him completely off-balance, directly toward Steve.

Who swung the flat of the shield in a home-run arc right into the top of Bucky’s skull with a noise like a Chinese gong.

Bucky instantly went limp and thudded to the floor in a nerveless heap. Natasha didn’t hesitate to tranq him in the neck right then and there. 

“So…” Breathing heavily, she wiped stray strands of hair from her face. “Let’s search the rest of the apartment.”

“Yeah,” Steve gasped, his leg giving way under him again. “Just… just give me a sec, will you?”

The apartment turned out to be frustratingly empty, but at least they weren’t swarmed by either HYDRA agents or local law enforcement. 

Though that did mean that Lukin had gotten away. Again.

Natasha eyed Steve’s leg critically. “I think we’re all done here.”

Twenty minutes later, they were on a Quinjet heading toward the Helicarrier. Immediately on boarding, Natasha sedated Bucky into a much deeper sleep with Pentobarbital.

“I’m starting to want to kill Lukin.” Steve growled as he sat there, knowing that somewhere - who knew where by that point - Lukin was laughing at them. “We need to bring him down, Nat. I mean it. I don’t care how rich or well-connected he is, he needs to be thrown in a hole for the rest of his natural life and then some.”

“Mm.” Natasha trailed her fingertips lightly over Bucky’s hair before dropping her hand. “We don’t know what he’s going to be like when he wakes up.”

Steve felt the icy grip around his insides again and wished it didn’t feel so familiar. After everything they’d done, was it going to be back to square one all over again? Had Lukin, in the space of an hour or so, managed to wipe out all the painstaking progress Bucky had made during nine long months?

“We’re going to need Hank,” he said dully, staring at Bucky’s slack, unconscious face. “Again.”

\---

**Avengers Tower**  
**several hours later**

“Well, Steven, it’s a good thing you called me.” How Hank McCoy managed to sound cheerful in even the most dire of situations, Steve would never quite understand. “Between our friend here and your busted knee, it seems you’ve all had quite the day.”

“I’d rather deal with my knee for a few days than the rest of it for another minute.” 

Steve had obligingly let Hank look at his knee with a few of the machines in the Tower’s medical bay, and the diagnosis had been a cracked and dislocated patella. His knee was now encased in a metal brace so complicated he didn’t know how he was supposed to get it off. Hank had smiled and said he wasn’t, not yet anyway, and that he ought to be thankful none of the ligaments had been damaged.

He looked over at Bucky, who had been stripped of his field uniform and weapons and dressed in a pair of his pajamas that Natasha grabbed from the suite. An IV line was taped securely to his organic hand. 

And they had strapped him even more securely to the bed. 

“So what’s your diagnosis, Doc?” 

Steve tried to make his voice light, tried to match Hank’s irrepressible good humor, but it just wasn’t working. Not when his eyes were focused on the heavy Adamantium manacles that held Bucky’s mechanical arm securely in place, or the thick leather straps with thick metal buckles that held the rest of him down. Not when Natasha’s words from before were still echoing in his mind.

_We don’t know what he’s going to be like when he wakes up._

_We don’t know…_

“My diagnosis is to let him sleep through the night and then rouse him in the morning.” Hank sat down on the rolling stool. “We’ll see what he’s like then.”

Steve’s face fell at that, and he knew Hank would see it, but nothing further came of it. And when Hank eventually shooed him out of the room and he wound up sitting on a plastic chair out in the anteroom, it was Maria who finally got him up and moving by calling his cell phone to tell him they’d managed to apprehend a single member of HYDRA command - a man named Edgar Lascombe, the chief financial consultant for several multinational corporations. He’d also served as HYDRA’s CFO, funneling money into their coffers through various methods. And with him in custody, things wouldn’t run nearly as smoothly at HYDRA as they once had.

But the rest of the day was spent waiting. Waiting, and worrying, and keeping company with the thoughts in his head that just wouldn’t leave him alone. And at night, he barely slept, the bed in the suite feeling empty and cold.

At some point, he must have drifted off, as he was awoken suddenly by JARVIS announcing that “Ms. Romanoff is at the door, sir. Should I let her in?”

“Yeah.” Steve sat up in the bed, knowing it would be more polite to get up to greet Natasha but feeling too weary to even swing his legs over the side. If anyone would understand, it would be her. “Yeah, let her in.”

A moment later, Natasha walked into the bedroom, a cardboard tray of coffees in one hand and a box of Dunkin Donuts in the other.

“You look like shit.” She pushed the coffee tray into his hands, then took one of the cups for herself. “You definitely need that more than I do.”

“Thanks.” He scowled up at her, running a hand through his unkempt hair, and wondered how she could always manage to look so put-together. She couldn’t have slept any more than he had, but you’d never know it to look at her. Whereas he probably looked exactly as bad as he felt. Good thing there was no mirror. “What time is it, even?”

“A little past nine.” She seated herself on the edge of the bed, setting the box of donuts aside next to her. “I just spoke to Hank, and he said James should be awake soon. Gives you enough time to eat a donut and drink some coffee and try to look halfway presentable.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Or you could just skip that last part.”

“I don’t think I ever managed to look presentable.” He took a sip of the coffee, found it invigorating, and took another, bigger sip. “Halfway or otherwise. So yeah, I think I’d just as soon skip that part.”

Natasha flipped open the donut box, plucked out a chocolate glazed, and smirked at him before taking a bite. “I think you should walk into James’ room just like that. In your underwear, with your hair sticking up all over the place.” 

He looked down at himself, saw that he was indeed still in his shorts, and knew he didn’t want to look in the mirror to see what his hair looked like. He’d just imagine the worst, and then double it.

“I should do the exact opposite of that,” he yawned, taking a sip of his coffee that ended up being more of a gulp. “A shower might help wake me up. I might do that.” He stared blearily at the donut box. “Any jelly in there?”

She took another bite of her donut. “Two of them.”

“Mm.” He reached into the box, rummaged around for a jelly donut, and ate about half of it in a single bite. The other half followed in short order, helped along by the coffee, and he hauled himself with difficulty to his feet after he’d finished.

“So.” He looked over at Natasha, smiling a very unsteady smile that did nothing to conceal how nervous he felt. What if Bucky woke up and tried to kill them again? What if all his progress had been undone? What if - God forbid - Lukin had managed to do something to him that would keep any further progress from being made? 

The thoughts battered at him like fists, not letting up, not giving him any space to think, freezing his guts and setting his brain on fire. He’d given his all to find Bucky, to fight for him, to drag him to therapy week after week, because he’d believed with all his heart that Bucky could come back. And he’d begun to, which had given Steve such joy, he couldn’t find words to describe it. But Bucky had done the only thing that could possibly have jeopardized it all, and now…

Now it all hinged on what happened when he woke up.

Steve held onto the wobbly smile a second longer, knowing he wasn’t fooling anybody. “Make myself presentable, right?”

Natasha seemed to peer right through him. “Have a good cry in the shower and then pull yourself together so we can give him hell.”

Twenty minutes later, he stood in front of the door to the medical bay with Natasha at his elbow. 

He’d turned up the temperature in the shower until it had made his skin red, keeping the weight off his injured knee as much as he could, and let the scalding, stinging blast of the water buffet him as he fought down the terrible ideas that had been clawing at his mind. Bucky was still alive, and where there was life, there was hope. He’d been in much worse shape nine months ago, and even after HYDRA had kidnapped him and tortured him and sent him back out into the world again to kill his way through their traitors, Steve hadn’t given up on him. And he damn sure wasn’t going to give up now.

And then he’d toweled himself and gotten dressed and gone to face whatever was in store.

Hank sat on the rolling stool by Bucky’s bedside, one leg crossed over the other, his blue, furry paws resting on a knee. “He’s just coming around now. I take it you’d like a moment of privacy?”

“Please.” Steve nodded, but as Hank got up with his usual impossible grace and began to move towards the door, Steve quickly added “But don’t go too far. We might-” He swallowed hard. “We might need to put him under again in a hurry.”

“One step ahead of you, Steven. I’ll just be refreshing the coffee pot.” Hank grinned a toothy, feline smile. “I’m afraid last night’s brew has gone dreadfully stale.” And with a small wave, he excused himself from the room.

A minute or two passed in tense silence.

Bucky came around by degrees. His eyelids fluttered and then blinked slowly open until he was looking around the room with an unfocused, yet wary gaze. He looked down at himself, saw that he was strapped securely to the bed, and his eyes widened considerably.

“Bucky?” Steve moved forward hesitantly, Natasha by his side, and leaned over the edge of the bed. He didn’t know what to say, and apparently neither did Natasha, so he simply waited. 

Waited, and hoped with all his might that the worst wasn’t going to be true.

Bucky looked up at him. His eyes drifted over to Natasha. He licked his lips and managed a very parched sounding “Steve?”

“Oh, thank God.” The relief that washed over Steve nearly knocked him off his already unsteady feet. Bucky still remembered him. He steadied himself on the bed rail. “Do you know where you are?”

Bucky hesitated for what felt like far too long. Finally he said, “Kyiv?”

Steve looked over at Natasha, his eyes searching hers for some sign of the relief and gratitude he was feeling, but she was as composed as ever. She did, however, move her hand slightly on the bed rail to let her little finger brush against the side of Steve’s hand.

“No, not Kyiv.” Steve looked down at Bucky, the smile on his face beginning to fade. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Are you going to…” Bucky licked his lips again. “Are you going to untie me…? Thirsty…”

“In a minute.” Natasha’s voice broke in. Steve had been about to reach over to release the restraints, but Natasha had moved her hand to rest it on top of his in a gesture that he’d taken as a clear warning. And when he took a moment to think about it, he understood why. She was wary of a trap - of Bucky putting on an act to lull them into letting him loose, only to attack them again once he was free. 

Steve felt the fiery anger build in his chest again, and this time it wasn’t only directed towards Lukin. He was angry at Bucky, too, for deliberately going against all the warnings he’d been given and giving Lukin the opportunity to twist his mind into knots again. If he hadn’t gone off on his own, none of this would have been necessary…

“First,” Natasha was saying, “you need to answer the question. What’s the last thing you remember?”

A frown skittered across Bucky’s mouth and settled there. “There was… a bomb. And then I was in a… a parking garage.” He chewed on his lip and looked at Steve. “And you… You hit me with your shield… I think.”

“Yeah, I did.” Steve looked back over at Natasha, asking her a silent question with his eyes: Could they let him up now?

Natasha held his gaze for a moment, then looked down at Bucky and studied him for a minute. And finally, she reached over and touched the button to deactivate the restraints.

Slowly Bucky pulled himself into a sitting position. He looked at the IV in his hand, but left it alone for the moment, then looked at Steve. “Water?”

There was a dispenser by the door. Steve filled a cup and brought it back to Bucky, then stood there with his arms folded while Bucky drank it. Now that he knew Bucky was all right - that Natasha’s ‘cognitive recalibration’ idea had worked and that things had actually turned out in the best possible way - his relief had faded, and in its place was a growing anger.

“You know, Buck, you did a pretty damned stupid thing back there.”

Bucky didn’t meet his gaze, instead staring into the cup of water. He didn’t say anything.

“You knew what would happen if you went off on your own.” The angry frustration was clear in Steve’s voice as well as his words. “Dr. Levitt told you, Darien Nash told you, Natasha told you, I told you, and you just didn’t listen. Every one of us said to you, right after Lukin broke into your phone to threaten you, that he was just trying to bait you. That he knew he couldn’t get you while you were with the rest of us, and he’d have the best chance at nabbing you if he taunted you into going after him alone.” 

Bucky said nothing, and neither did Natasha, so Steve plowed forward.

“And you went ahead and did it anyway, and is it any surprise that things turned out just like we all said they would?”

Bucky chewed on his lip and continued to stare into the water. “He was right there, Steve.” He still wouldn’t meet Steve’s gaze. “He was right there.”

“Are you even listening?” Steve exploded. “You went after him by yourself, and he got a hold of you and fucked around with your head all over again!” He felt like grabbing Bucky by his shirt front and shaking him until his teeth rattled. Until he’d shaken some sense into him. “Do you have any idea how it felt to see you turn into the Winter Soldier again? To see your eyes go dead and have you trying to kill me? To have to fight you again just to bring you back to your senses, when if you’d just stayed with us like you were supposed to, none of this would have happened?”

To the side of him, Natasha folded her arms and continue to stare at Bucky with a hard gaze, but didn’t say anything. 

“I can’t believe you would do that.” Steve shook his head angrily, looking down at Bucky with eyes blazing. God, it had terrified him so much to think of the worst happening to Bucky, and he’d never have been able to forgive himself if it had. “I can’t believe that after everything we said, after all the warnings everybody gave you, you’d just decide to ignore them and do the exact thing we all told you not to do.”

Carefully Bucky set the water cup on the bedside table and then both of his hands came to rest on his lap. Without the water to look gaze into, he stared down at his hands instead. “My head hurts,” he said quietly.

“Well, that’s a big surprise.” Steve’s glare intensified as his hands went to his hips. “Natasha and I had to knock you out to stop you from trying to murder us.” Bucky winced at that, but Steve kept going. “Not to mention whatever Lukin must have done to your head to get you to that point in the first place.”

“I don’t... “ Bucky shook his head, a look of confused misery on his face. He still refused to meet anyone’s eyes. “I don’t know what he did. He said words. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“God damn it, Bucky, it doesn’t matter what he did!” Steve gesticulated wildly in his anger. “What matters is that you walked right up to him and let him do it! You fell right into the trap that everybody warned you about, and you don’t seem to realize it!”

Bucky seemed to wither under Steve’s gaze. “I’d like to sleep now,” he murmured. “I’d like to go back to sleep.”

Steve felt an even greater rush of anger coming on and was about to open his mouth to tell Bucky that Lukin would have made him go back to sleep, all right, back to sleep for years, but something stopped him. Natasha laid a gentle yet insistent hand on his forearm and gripped it, and he swallowed the invective he’d been about to let loose.

“Fine,” he said flatly as he turned on his heel and stalked out. “I’ll be back to check on you later.”

\---

Bucky watched Steve walk out of the room, a growing sense of terror and nausea taking hold of him. His head throbbed and his stomach twisted horribly, and he wanted to curl up and go away.

Go away inside of his head, like he used to do. 

Steve was angry at him. Steve didn’t want to talk to him. Steve had turned and walked away instead of staying and talking to him.

It was possible Steve would come back and say that he didn’t want Bucky to live with him anymore.

Bucky crumpled into the bed and went to the pull the blanket over his head, but Natasha was at his bedside suddenly, a hand out to keep him from getting the blanket all the way up.

[“None of that,”] she said firmly, her eyes fixed on him with a look of steely intensity. [“You’re incredibly lucky, you know.”] Her left eyebrow arched, though the look in her eyes didn’t change. [“The worst you came away with is a bad headache.”]

Bucky met her gaze. He couldn’t help himself. [“You’re angry, too.”] It wasn’t a question.

[“Disappointed,”] she corrected him. [“I half expected you to do something like this, but I guess I wanted to believe you’d listen to reason.”]

[“You knew?”]

[“I know _you_ , James.”] She folded her arms. [“I know how you think, I know your methods, and I know how much you hate Lukin.”] She looked at him pointedly. [“And so does he.”]

[“He was right there, Natalia.”] 

He looked at, trying to will her to understand… what, exactly? He couldn’t even answer that himself.

[“He was right there. What should I have done?”]

[“You know what you should have done.”] She looked down at him with a wry twist of her lips. [“Rogers just got through yelling it into your face. You don’t need to hear it again.”]

[“No.”] He sounded desperate to his own ears. [“There was a bomb. He wanted to kill all of us. He…”]

Bucky didn’t even know what he was trying to say anymore. He sunk into his pillow, considered trying to pull the blanket over his head again, and thought better of it. 

He sighed and looked up at her imploringly.

[“He wanted to get your attention, James.”] She looked down at him for a long moment as if considering whether to follow some impulse or other. The answer must have been yes, because she drew back the blanket and slid into bed next to him with one graceful motion. [“He wanted to draw you out and lure you in, and he wanted to keep the rest of us occupied while he did it.”]

[“Well…”] He sighed again. [“It worked.”]

Why was he so fucking stupid?

[“Yes, it did.”] She propped herself up on one elbow and looked at him with that same intensity as before. [“It didn’t need to, but it did. The question is, are you going to keep on giving him exactly what he wants?”]

Instead of answering the question, he asked, [“Why aren’t you angry at me?”]

[“Because I’m disappointed instead.”] She gave him a sour look. [“I’ll leave you to decide whether or not that’s worse. Besides, you’ll be getting all the angry you need from Rogers.”]

Bucky withered. 

Part of him wanted very badly to roll over and pretend none of it was happening. But the throbbing ache in his head and the sick feeling in his stomach, along with Natasha’s disappointment and Steve’s anger, made it all very, very real.

[“I don’t want you to be disappointed. And I don’t...”] He chewed on his lip. [“I don’t want him to be mad at me.”]

[“Not for nothing, James,”] she said as she laid a gentle hand on his metal forearm. [“But you had every chance in the world to avoid it.”]

He sighed.

Natasha was right, and he was an idiot, and he didn’t know what else he could even say. 

[“Still.”] Natasha’s hand slid up the length of his metal arm to come to rest on his shoulder, and she shifted her body closer to his in the bed. [“I do love you. Foolish choices and all.”] She lifted her head to fix him with her gimlet eyes again. [“But if you ever do something like that again, no one will even know where the bones are.”]

[“I believe you,”] he said quietly, because he absolutely did.

A moment later, Dr. McCoy breezed into the room and shooed Natasha out, claiming he wanted to “check on our patient here.” Natasha gave Bucky a significant look before walking out of the room, and then it was just Bucky and his enormous, furry blue doctor.

“Well now.” Dr. McCoy smiled a catlike smile as he took Bucky’s right hand in one of his enormous paws. “Can it be you’re learning? You didn’t pull the IV out this time, and I didn’t even have to superglue the line to your hand.”

Bucky licked his lips. “I didn’t want you to be angry, too.”

“Angry? _Moi?_ ” Dr. McCoy put on a very overblown sad face and put a paw over his heart, then chuckled. “Come now. Do I seem like the sort who’d get angry?” He shook his head cheerfully, then withdrew the IV needle quickly and almost painlessly. “No, no; I’d be much more likely to just use staples next time.”

Bucky sighed again. “I did a dumb thing. People are mad at me.” Another sigh. He seemed to be full of them today. “Steve’s mad at me.”

“Steven cares for you a great deal more than I’ve ever seen him care for anyone else,” Dr. McCoy replied as he pressed a wad of cotton against the IV puncture and taped it in place. “He was terrified that the progress you’d made might have all been undone, and that you might have been damaged beyond repair.” He grinned toothily. “So yes, I’d say he’s a bit miffed.”

“He walked away.” 

Dr. McCoy dragged a stool over to the side of the bed and settled his massive bulk onto it gracefully. He pushed his round-lensed glasses further up on the bridge of his nose and crossed one massive leg over the other at the knee.

“How much would you care to bet that he’ll be back within the half hour, his lower lip quivering and tears in his eyes, flinging his arms around you and thanking high holy heaven that you’re here?” He smiled. “Go ahead. Bet the farm. I’ll learn to steer a plow.”

“I don’t know.” Bucky was silent for a moment. “He yelled. And he walked away. And… I don’t know. He doesn’t do that.” 

Again, the thought of Steve not wanting Bucky to live with him anymore dug its claws into Bucky’s head and he had to get it out before he made himself sick.

“He might come back in here and say he wants me to live somewhere else.” He swallowed. Licked his lips. “He might say that it’s… that I’m… too much trouble.”

He felt sick at the thought.

Dr. McCoy chuckled again, louder this time, and shook his head. His long blue ponytail swayed as he did. “The day Steven does that, I’ll eat a plate of asparagus.” He shuddered. “Horrible, vomitous stuff. I’m working on a method of fundamentally altering the space-time continuum around my person to prevent myself from ever coming into contact with it again.” 

Bucky sighed.

Another smile, a gentle one this time. “But on a lighter note, of course he’s not going to send you away. From what he’s told me and from what I’ve seen, he’d probably rather eat the asparagus himself - or do something equally horrible - than make himself live without you.”

Bucky frowned. “Maybe.”

“Definitely.” Dr. McCoy grinned toothily again and patted him on the chest. “Now, I’ve brought something for you to eat.” He was up from the stool in a second, scampering out of the room with impossible quickness and ease for someone of his size, but he was back in another second carrying a big tray of breakfast.

“Pancakes, sausage, and fresh fruit,” he said, settling the tray onto the swing-over table with a grin. “I trust you’ll approve.”

Bucky managed a small smile. “And I’m not heavily sedated this time, so you’re actually giving me a fork.” He glanced at Dr. McCoy. “I might not even drop any pancakes down my shirt this time.”

“Don’t disillusion me,” the doctor responded, shaking a massive clawed finger at him. “I prefer to imagine you’ll just suck it all into your mouth like a massive vacuum cleaner and disdain the fork entirely.” He sighed theatrically and sat back down on the stool. “Ah well. I suppose we’ve all got to grow up sometime.” He frowned momentarily before brightening once again. “I’ve got just the gustational accompaniment. Oh, JARVIS? Would you kindly cue up the duduk music? And try to stay away from the depressing tracks, if you’d be so kind.”

Bucky picked up the fork and stabbed one of the sausages. “Gustational?” He shoved the sausage into his mouth, suddenly realized just how hungry he was, and began to eat quickly.

Just like a massive vacuum cleaner. 

“Gustation. Noun, formal.” Dr. McCoy steepled his paws. “The action or faculty of tasting.” He smiled. “Ah, Merriam-Webster, what would a poor linguaphile like myself do without you?” He looked over at Bucky and seemed to realize just how fast the food was disappearing. “ _Bon appétit_ , then,” he said with a chuckle. “A vacuum cleaner it is, I see. Fork or not.”

And to the haunting sound of the duduk, Bucky continued to eat his breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, concerns, and feedback are always warmly welcomed, eagerly hoped for, and greatly appreciated!


	25. Just Like This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky sighed, and their lips were so close, Steve could practically taste the remnants of maple syrup, slightly sticky and sweet and strangely tantalizing._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting a bit later than usual, but hey, it's still Monday. Enjoy!

**Avengers Tower**  
**same day**

Stewing in his own anger hadn’t been terribly pleasant. And it had certainly been a waste of Steve’s morning. But the things he thought and the things he felt didn’t always match up, and this was one of those times.

The anger had settled down somewhat, but it wasn’t gone, and it drove him back down to the medical bay. He wanted to confront Bucky again now that he’d had some time to think about just how stupid a thing he’d done and just how much worse things could have been, and see if maybe - just maybe - Bucky understood why he was so upset.

He met Hank coming out of the medical bay just as he reached the doors. Hank was grinning and humming to himself, bearing a tray and some dishes on one uplifted paw like a waiter. 

“Ah, Steven,” he smiled. “Impeccable timing. He’s just finished his breakfast, and if you like, you can bring him upstairs with you. He’s perfectly fine so far as the tests show, so there’s little point in his continuing to occupy a hospital bed.”

“Thanks, Hank,” Steve said, and meant it. However angry he might have been about Bucky’s decision-making skills, he was overwhelmingly relieved that Bucky hadn’t been hurt either physically or mentally. “I think I’ll bring him up, yeah, but first I need to have a chat with him.”

“Don’t berate the poor boy too harshly now, Steven.” Hank looked at him over the rims of his glasses with gentle admonishment. “He’s worried you won’t want him around anymore.”

Steve shook his head disbelievingly. “After everything I’ve done to keep him around, he still thinks that?”

He’d practically begged Bucky to stay with him at every opportunity. He’d done everything he could think of to make him feel at home with him in Brooklyn. He’d woken up at odd hours of the night to check on him because he’d been paranoid about waking up and finding him gone. He’d even physically fought him to stop him from leaving. 

“I’d just about die if I lost him. Hasn’t he been paying attention?”

“Certainly,” Hank affirmed with a nod. “But he’s not mentally healthy, Steven. These things make perfect logical sense to you and me, as well they should. But do try to remember that for as much progress as he’s made - and there has been a great deal - he’s only barely begun the healing process.” Hank’s teacher stare returned. “You will remember that, won’t you?”

“Yeah.” Steve sighed. “Thanks again, Hank. I guess I’d better go talk to him now.”

He found Bucky lying down in bed, his hands folded on his stomach, staring up at the ceiling with a pensive expression on his face. He flinched visibly when Steve came in and shifted onto his side, and Steve had the distinct impression that Bucky would have pulled the blanket over his head had he not been lying on top of it. 

He felt a hot wave of guilt wash over him as he heard Hank’s gently admonishing voice in his head, and remembered his own harsh words to Bucky only hours ago.

“Hi, Bucky.” He sighed, jamming his hands into his pockets and feeling distinctly uncomfortable. “How’re you feeling? Any better?”

Bucky glanced at him. “Dr. McCoy said I can leave. He said there’s nothing wrong with me.” He snorted. “Nothing new wrong with me anyway.”

“Well, leaving only means heading upstairs right now.” Steve found a smile somewhere and stuck it on his face. “But hopefully we’ll be able to head back home in a few days.”

“Right.” A beat. “Home.” Bucky hesitated for what felt like too long, then pushed a hand through his hair. “I ate, but I should probably take a shower, so…”

“Do you want to take a shower upstairs?” Steve offered. “It’ll be a lot more comfortable, and that’s where all your clean clothes are anyway.”

Another hesitation. “Upstairs in our empty suite? That doesn’t even have food or drinks in it?” Bucky frowned and let his gaze drift toward the wall of windows. “I guess.”

Steve sighed. “I wish we could go home too, Buck.” He moved towards the bed and sat down on its edge. “But it’ll be another few days before it’s even fixed up, and probably a few days after that before Tony’s satisfied with the new security system.”

Bucky said nothing to that.

“But,” Steve continued, putting what he hoped would be a comforting hand on Bucky’s arm, “being here doesn’t have to be such a bad thing. At least you’re all in one piece, and at least you don’t have to be alone.”

Bucky chewed on his lip in silence. Finally he said, “We’re here because of me.” He didn’t meet Steve’s gaze. “Again.”

“We’re here because HYDRA sent assassins after me, Buck.” Steve sighed again, but gave Bucky’s arm a squeeze. “And they wrecked my apartment fighting you instead. That wasn’t your fault.”

Bucky shook his head and continued to stare stubbornly out the windows instead of looking at Steve. “He sent them. He wanted to draw me out.” He frowned. “And it worked.”

Steve didn’t understand at first. Then, when the realization hit home, all the anger from before blossomed into a fireball in his mind. Only this time it wasn’t directed at Bucky.

“That son of a bitch,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

Lukin was obsessed with Bucky, he realized suddenly, and he’d keep on finding ways to torture him and provoke him and shred his happiness to ribbons until they found a way to stop him. And Bucky wasn’t the only one who’d pay the price for that.

“Wait a second.” Steve’s brow furrowed. “How do you know Lukin sent them after me to draw you out?” His face darkened suddenly as comprehension dawned. “He told you.”

Bucky’s mouth thinned into a hard line, and that was all the answer Steve needed.

Steve clenched and unclenched his jaw a few times, but he kept Hank’s words in his mind and did his best to keep the frustration and anger out of his own voice, or at least not direct it at Bucky.

“Now do you understand why none of us wanted you to go after him all by yourself?”

For a long moment, Bucky chewed on his lip and said nothing. Finally, slowly, he said, “He was right there, Steve.” He swallowed loudly, his jaw tightening. “He was right the fuck there. What was I supposed to have done? Had I not followed him anyway, who knows what the fuck he might have done?”

Steve’s heart ached for Bucky. He couldn’t imagine how it must have felt for Bucky, to have Lukin put himself so tauntingly, tantalizingly close. 

He recalled the descriptions of the prisoners in Bucky’s file, the ones who’d been used to test Bucky’s skills. They must have known that escape was impossible, that the open door they were supposed to run for was a hopeless fantasy they would never be allowed to reach, but they’d run anyway. There were some things that were irresistible.

“I don’t know, Buck,” he finally said, settling down onto the bed next to Bucky and curling a protective arm around him. “I don’t know what he might’ve done. All I know is what he did do. And I know he wouldn’t have been able to do it if you hadn’t gone alone.” 

He squeezed his eyes shut against the awful thought of how much worse it could have been. 

“I can’t have you doing that again, Bucky. I can’t lose you again.”

“You keep saying that.” Bucky shifted closer until their bodies were pressed together and their foreheads gently touched. He sighed, breath warm and slightly syrup-sweet against Steve’s face. “You keep saying that, but do you realize how much easier it would be for you?”

“It wouldn’t be easy at all.” Steve leaned his forehead against Bucky’s, pressing harder. “Not when I’d have to spend every waking moment worrying about you instead of having you here so I can make sure you’re doing as well as you can be.” 

“I don’t make things easy,” Bucky murmured, his hand skating over Steve’s shoulder and coming to rest on the back of his neck. “You know I don’t.”

“Easy?” Steve smiled gently, bringing his own hand up to cup the back of Bucky’s head and hold their heads together. “No, not really. But ‘easy’ and ‘worth it’ are two different things. And you’re sure as hell worth it.”

“No,” Bucky breathed. “Not really.” His hand tightened at the back of Steve’s neck. “I don’t think I’m worth all the trouble I’ve continued to put you through. Not really.”

“Well, I say different.” Steve looked him in the eyes, his old familiar mulish stubbornness coming forward on its own. “You don’t know what it was like to lose you, Bucky. Not back in the war, and not after I got you back either.” 

Bucky smiled weakly. “Well, I keep coming back. So you don’t even lose me very well, do you?” He licked his lips. “And that can’t be easy either.”

“Don’t say that, Buck.” Steve knocked his head gently against Bucky’s, his smile fading. “You don’t know what losing you would do to me, you really don’t.”

“You keep saying that.” Bucky’s other hand came up to rest on Steve’s cheek. “You know that? You’ve said that so many times.”

“Clearly not enough.” Steve leaned his head into Bucky’s hand - his metal hand, he realized, and he found it didn’t bother him in the slightest. “Not if we’re still having this conversation.”

“You’re stubborn.” Bucky’s fingers scratched gently at the back of Steve’s neck, sending shivers down his spine. “You get these ideas in your head and you won’t let go of them, even if they make no sense.” Another small, hesitant smile. “You’ve always been that way, far as I can tell.”

“What doesn’t make sense about not wanting you to leave, Bucky?” He looked Bucky in the eyes. “Or wanting you to understand how much I want you to stay? What’s wrong with any of that?”

Bucky sighed, and their lips were so close, Steve could practically taste the remnants of maple syrup, slightly sticky and sweet and strangely tantalizing.

“I don’t know,” Bucky finally said. “You’re wearing me down. I know it would be a lot easier for everyone if I weren’t here. You wouldn’t be lying in this hospital bed with me, for one.” Again, he licked his lips. “And yet…”

“I wouldn’t be lying here with you if I didn’t want to be.” 

Steve reached up a hand to brush his fingertips gently against Bucky’s cheekbone, and Bucky sighed and leaned into his hand. 

“And it certainly wouldn’t be easier for anybody if you weren’t here. Me least of all.” Steve’s hand came to rest against the side of Bucky’s face. “If you weren’t here, then I’d have to be out there looking for you again. Worrying about you.” 

“You shouldn’t worry,” Bucky murmured, but there was no heat in that statement. No real attempt to convince Steve otherwise.

Steve closed his eyes and shook his head, feeling the touch of Bucky’s metal hand against his cheek. “This is the way it should be, Buck. Just like this.”

“Just like this?” Bucky echoed, breath hot against Steve’s skin. “Just us lying in bed together?”

“Together,” Steve repeated, suddenly a bit breathless. He felt the tip of his nose touch the tip of Bucky’s.

He couldn’t have said what prompted him to do it. The closeness of the two of them lying together, maybe, or the lingering fear of losing Bucky. But whatever the reason, a wild unreasoning feeling suddenly descended over him. And without thinking about it, and almost without realizing it, he suddenly brought his face forward and kissed Bucky full on the mouth.

His mind was paralyzed. For a long moment, so was the rest of him. It seemed as though everything he could feel had high-voltage electricity running through it. And Bucky leaned into it, deepening the kiss, one hand tightening at the back of Steve’s neck and the other scrabbling into his hair, and it was like some kind of long-sealed vault had opened somewhere in Steve’s heart and mind.

His hands grasped Bucky’s head, pulling their faces together almost desperately. He shifted his body closer to Bucky’s in the bed, pressing himself against Bucky. And everything he had, everything in his heart and mind and body, was focused on the kiss.

He was kissing Bucky.

Their bodies moved against each other in a needy rhythm, hips grinding together and legs entwining. Steve tangled his fingers in Bucky’s hair, and Bucky responded with a gasp that sent a jolt down Steve’s spine.

Bucky pulled back and looked at him, wide eyed and panting, fingers trembling against Steve’s neck. But before Steve could say anything, Bucky pressed his lips against Steve’s, and a moment later, their tongues found each other, and it was all too much.

Much too much.

Steve’s mind had moved beyond thinking. If he could’ve stopped to think about what he was doing - what _they_ were doing - his brain would probably have shut down. It was too big to process, too important to stop and think about, too right to even consider doing anything else. It had to go on, wherever it was headed, until it was done.

And so Steve let it go on.

His hands left Bucky’s face, his arms and legs wrapped around Bucky almost of their own accord, until the two of them were wound around each other. His lips pressed even more firmly against Bucky’s, and his tongue darted against Bucky’s to raise electric shivers throughout his body. But most astonishing of all was the way his hips were grinding against Bucky’s to the point of raising a stiffness in his pants that made them uncomfortably tight.

“Steve…” The name was a breathless moan on Bucky’s lips, punctuated by desperate kisses and the frantic movement of their bodies.

“Captain Rogers?” JARVIS’s voice cut in, crisp and efficient, and Steve nearly rolled off the bed in shock. “Priority call from Deputy Director Maria Hill. Shall I patch her through now, sir?”

“Yeah,” Steve managed, unable to tear his eyes away from Bucky. His heart was hammering at his ribs as if it wanted to get out and go running around the room, and he could hardly catch his breath, but he had to pull it together and find out what was so important that Maria couldn’t leave him alone. “Put her through.”

Bucky was panting and looking at him with wide eyes, but before he could say anything, Maria appeared on a screen on the far wall.

“Captain Rogers?” she said, and then the rest of it was a blur. Something about the captured HYDRA commander - Edgar Lascombe - and interrogation and Steve’s presence being urgently needed on the Helicarrier, and in some kind of daze, he agreed that he’d be right up as soon as possible.

And then Maria was gone, and he and Bucky were left sitting on the bed.

“I, uh...” 

He looked at Bucky and realized that for the first time in a long time - maybe as long as he could remember - he was absolutely lost for words. 

“Well, Steve,” Bucky said quietly. “Sounds like you need to go do your job.” He licked his lips. “And I should go take a shower.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s mouth felt dry, and his brain wouldn’t work properly. “Yeah, that sounds… yeah.”

Even so, what had just happened couldn’t be allowed to just pass without comment. Or worse, to just fade away completely. It had been abrupt, it had been shocking and surprising, and it had been unprecedented, but it hadn’t been wrong. He knew that absolutely, felt it with as much conviction as he’d ever felt for anything, and he’d defy anyone to say otherwise.

So what would he do about it?

“I have to go.” The words came slowly, thickly, at a pace that made him feel tongue-tied and stupid. “Up to the Helicarrier, I mean. When I get back…” He looked at Bucky with hope and anticipation and crazy fear crashing around in his head.

Bucky looked at him for a long moment. Licked his lips again. “When you get back, what?”

“I’m not sure.” Steve felt curiously light, as if he might float off the ground at any moment. And still his mind wouldn’t quite fold itself entirely around what they’d just done. “But maybe we should pick up where we left off and see if that helps.”

“So…” Another long pause, and then something like a smirk flitted across Bucky’s mouth. “I guess this means you’re not mad at me anymore?”

Steve couldn’t help it; he burst out laughing. And as he shook his head and tried to get a hold of himself, he kept thinking that he’d never been able to stay mad at Bucky for too long. The best he’d ever been able to manage was a couple of days, and by the end of the first day he’d been utterly miserable. Of course, Bucky’s sense of humor had a lot to do with that…

“Not as mad as I was, no.” He smiled, the laughter subsiding. “And I’d say you’ve learned your lesson, at any rate. No more going solo?”

Bucky shrugged. “I don’t know, Steve.” Before Steve could say anything, he held up a hand. “Go take care of your business, and then you can yell at me.”

Yelling, thought Steve as he headed up to his room to change into his uniform, was about the farthest thing from his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me with your best feedback!


	26. Conversations with Smart People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So what was James up to when you left him?”_
> 
> _Steve hesitated a while before replying. And when he did, his voice came out quite a bit more loudly than he might have intended it to. “Sitting up in bed.” A laugh that sounded somewhat forced. “Telling me to come back so I could yell at him some more.”_
> 
> _“Oh.” Natasha shrugged. “I thought you were kissing.”_

**Avengers Tower**   
**same day**

Natasha had known all along that it was bound to happen. She supposed she was only surprised that it had happened so quickly.

Or maybe that it had taken so _long?_

She honestly wasn’t sure. 

Quietly she backed out of the room before either James or Steve noticed her. They were otherwise occupied, of course, but she could only imagine how quickly they would have jumped apart had they seen her.

She could very easily imagine the _shame_ or _guilt_ that would come over both of their faces.

Not shame or guilt that they had been kissing at all, of course. They were well beyond that, even if neither of the two idiots realized it. Rather, they would both feel shame and guilt at the idea that they had _betrayed_ her. 

And the ensuing fallout from that would be hell, and likely impossible to control. Steve, being who he was, would never stop beating himself up over it. Their relationship would spiral apart quicker than Natasha could keep it together, because he would never be able to move past the supposed shame of his betrayal.

James, on the other hand, still believed he was nothing more than a killer and hardly a man, and he would spin the whole thing into being his fault, a betrayal of Natasha, and another example of how Lukin had been absolutely right about him all along.

Well, she couldn’t let that happen to either of them.

Nor was she prepared to give up James. Not after they had finally found each other again. Not after they finally had a real chance at a real relationship.

Mind working furiously, she sent a quick text to Maria, letting her know that she would be the one escorting Steve up to the Helicarrier. Then she waited outside of Steve’s suite, leaning against the wall as if she had nothing else going on, until Steve appeared, all dressed up and ready to go.

“Hey Rogers,” she said easily. “Maria asked me to bring you up to the Helicarrier.” She held up a set of car keys. “I have to return one of the Mark V’s to the pool anyway.”

“Sure, Nat.” Steve nodded, smiling with the air of a man who was walking on clouds and didn’t understand how. In all likelihood, he hadn’t begun to give the matter any serious thought. If he had, he’d probably have been wearing a very different look around her. “Thanks.”

They were silent on the long elevator ride down to the garage, though Steve was practically bouncing on his heels, and Natasha wondered how long it would take for it to hit him.

She needed to get to him before he got to himself, after all.

Not only that, the darker part of her mind whispered, she needed to get to both of them before they did something that would only double the shame spiral and make the whole situation blow up irrevocably in their faces.

They already shared a bed. Had been doing so for months. James took naps on Steve, while Steve stroked him like a cat. They cuddled on the couch like lovers while watching movies. The fact that they _hadn’t_ already woken up, covered in each other’s fluids, was the real surprise.

She mentally slapped herself before she could take that thought any further.

Well, maybe just a little further.

She couldn’t help the way her mouth quirked up at the corners, and Steve noticed.

“You look like you’re in a pretty good mood.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“Oh, you know.” She started the Mark V, and a moment later, they were headed down the street. “I was thinking of that movie we hardly watched. What was it called? _Mad Rex? Mad Mex?_ The one where everyone was blowing up and there were a lot of cars.”

“ _Mad Max._ ” Steve chuckled. He leaned back slightly in the seat, turning to look out the window, but then quickly turned back to her with a dopey grin. “I remember enough about it to know you probably shouldn’t be thinking about it while we’re driving.”

“Why’s that?” she asked casually, as the car took to the air. A moment later, they were soaring over Manhattan. 

Usually she loved that part, but she had more interesting things on her mind right then.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Steve looked out the window again, as he always seemed to when they went flying. “Probably because of all the insane car stunts and over-the-top crashes.” He chuckled. “I don’t really want to recreate any.”

“Oh, that.” 

The car climbed a bit higher, and soon Natasha would have to put the safety top down. Which was just as well, because they were shouting into the wind anyway.

“I thought it was because of the massage and all the sensual touching.”

That seemed to do the trick.

“Uh…” Steve was suddenly lost for words, and despite the wind, he seemed to have gone suddenly red in the cheeks. “Yeah, I, uh… I guess that could be a reason too.”

Natasha shrugged. “Or the brownies. Those were pretty good.”

“Yeah.” Steve seemed to suddenly become lost in thought. “Yeah, that was a pretty good evening all around.”

Natasha glanced at him. He was so heartbreakingly sincere and guileless, and while that made him potentially - and dangerously - very easily to manipulate, it also made him incredibly endearing.

Loveable, really.

She smiled. “Yes, it was a good evening, wasn’t it?”

Not too long after, she landed the Mark V on the Helicarrier. And not too long after that, all personal musings needed to be pushed aside for the time being. 

The capture of Edgar Lascombe, one of the top commanders within HYDRA, was a huge deal, after all. A potentially crippling blow, if they could act on it fast enough.

Steve certainly seemed to think so as well, and he threw himself into the task of interrogating Lascombe with the sort of fervor Natasha herself could never match. She stood in the observation room behind a one-way mirror and watched Steve, in tandem with Maria Hill and with the occasional pointed contributions of Phil Coulson, spend three hours attacking Lascombe from every conceivable angle. 

Lascombe himself, however, remained almost entirely silent, as was to be expected from a member of HYDRA command. He seemed to be regarding the whole thing as a temporary irritation - an inconvenience from which he would shortly be extricated - and he didn’t give up a thing.

She’d have to take a crack at him herself. Especially since the man’s team of high paid, high powered lawyers would most likely be arriving the very next morning.

“Well, it’s obvious he thinks he’s above the law,” she said to Steve, passing him a cup of Peruvian hot chocolate, once the interrogation had concluded and Lascombe had been escorted back to his cell. “And he’s going to be coming in here with good lawyers.”

“Nobody’s above the law,” Steve responded with that patented look of determination. He blew the steam from the mug of hot chocolate and looked over the rim at her. “Sleazy high-priced mouthpieces or otherwise.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “You want me to take a crack at him?”

“Not today.” Steve frowned into his hot chocolate, and it was obvious that he didn’t like having to make that call. “It’s been hours, and I’ve got to be getting back to Bucky.” 

Something showed in his face then, a muddled look of excitement and apprehension and guilt, and she read it like a large-print book. Still, he did his best to recover.

“That being said, if anybody’s got a chance at it, it’s you.” He smiled, the jumbled look still showing in his eyes. “He’s not going to give anything up willingly, but that’s never seemed to be a problem for you.”

“No.” She sipped at her hot chocolate. “It’s never been a problem for me.”

He said nothing to that, and for a moment or two, they stood there, drinking their hot chocolate, until Natasha said:

“So what was James up to when you left him?”

Steve hesitated a while before replying. And when he did, his voice came out quite a bit more loudly than he might have intended it to. “Sitting up in bed.” A laugh that sounded somewhat forced. “Telling me to come back so I could yell at him some more.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “I thought you were kissing.”

Steve choked on his hot chocolate, spluttering and looking back at her with an expression of red-faced mortification. “You…” He couldn’t seem to make the words come out properly, his mouth working without any sounds coming out. “I… uh, I mean…”

She took a long pull on her drink and looked up at him without saying a word. 

There was another long round of stammering, during which she was somewhat tempted to actually feel sorry for him. He really had no idea how transparent he was, how little of a filter existed between what he felt and what he showed. 

It was kind of sweet, really.

“I’m sorry, Nat,” he finally said in a voice that seemed lost. “I didn’t know it was going to happen until it happened, and I’d never do anything to get between the two of you, and -”

She just barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “Well, how did it feel?” At his stupefied expression, she added, “The kiss? How did it feel?”

His only response was a bewildered, almost pleading, “Huh?”

“Oh my God, Rogers.” She made a show of glancing around the room, even though no one else was there. “You’re not a virgin, are you? Please tell me you’re not a virgin. I mean, from what Sharon told me -”

“What?” He went a shade redder, if such a thing was possible, and began to sputter indignantly. “No! No, I’m not, and what has that got to do with anything anyhow?”

If she didn’t get control of things quickly, she was going to need to sit him down and get him to breathe into a paper bag at any moment. And wouldn’t that be a pathetic ending to the afternoon?

“Okay then. So…” She said the words slowly and carefully. “How did it feel?” She took another sip of her drink.

He looked at her strangely, but got a hold of himself. “Different,” he said slowly, his eyes locked with hers. As if he were trying to gauge her reaction, or maybe as if he were searching for something. 

Permission, maybe?

He hesitated a long time before blinking, and finally said what he really meant.

“Right.” His eyes told her everything she’d ever need to know. “It felt right.”

Natasha nodded. “Like it was a long time coming?”

His expression turned quizzical, though there was a strange smile in his eyes. “How did you -”

He didn’t have to finish the question for her to know what the rest of it would have been. How did she always know just what he was thinking, or feeling, without his having to say it? The corners of her mouth twitched in a momentary, barely perceptible smile that Rogers - _Steve_ \- would never have picked up on. Maybe someday she’d answer his question seriously. Until then, it was far too enjoyable to watch him make those faces.

“Yeah,” he finally said, the smile spreading from his eyes to the rest of his face. “Now that I think about it, yeah.” 

“Well then.” She leaned back against the counter, swirling the cup around in her hand. “What happens now?”

Steve blew out a heavy sigh and collapsed back against the wall. His hot chocolate hung in his hand as if forgotten. “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “He’s the best friend I ever had in all the world.” He turned his eyes on her again, that near-pleading look returning. “I love him, Natasha, but I’m…” He sighed again, shaking his head. “I’m not going to risk doing something that’ll ruin things for him. Or for you. So… I don’t know.”

She looked at him for a moment. “I know you love him. I love him, too.” A small smile flitted across her mouth. “So I guess the question is: what do you _want_ now?”

“What do I want?” He let out a single abrupt laugh, one tinged with more irony than humor. Or was it sadness? “I want Bucky to be happy.”

Of course he would say something like that. She bit back a sigh, reminding herself that the most successful interrogations never came from impatience or frustration. 

“You want him to be happy no matter what, right?”

“Of course.” 

God, she could almost see the exclamation point in the look Rogers was giving her. The raised eyebrows. The faint exasperation in his voice.

He was so utterly predictable. It was almost painful.

Still, she kept a straight face and continued. “So what if he was happiest moving out of your place and moving in with me?”

“I…” The look on his face was all the answer she needed, but he needed to make himself say it. He needed to hear himself say it.

“Well?” She sipped at her drink. Waited.

“Well…” He hesitated almost long enough to make her want to do more than raise an eyebrow at him. “I mean… I’d rather he was happiest staying with me, but…”

She said nothing.

“It’s just that…” He sighed irritably and shook his head. “I’ve missed him for so long. He does his best when he’s with me. I can keep an eye on him, I can make sure he gets to his therapy appointments on time, I can even keep him from having nightmares.” 

“So?” Natasha shrugged. “I can do those things, too. And I have been.”

Steve looked up at her, a fleeting look of - was it anger? - passing over his face, and she could read his thoughts plainly. Somewhere in his head, in his heart, and probably right on the tip of his tongue were the words _But he’s mine._

What would it take to drag those words out of him?

“Maybe you can,” he shot back, the confrontational look slowly draining from his face but remaining in his eyes. “That’s not the point though.”

She looked at him for a long moment. Sipped her drink and looked at him some more. “What is the point then?”

His face worked for a long moment, his mouth tightening and the muscles in his cheeks fluttering as he clenched his jaw. Every tiny muscle around his eyes went through a staggeringly complicated array of movements, producing a parade of emotions that was almost painful to read.

“I want him to stay with me,” he said finally. “He belongs with me. He remembered me. He came looking for me way back in the beginning.” His shoulders sagged. “But more than that… I just don’t _want_ to see him go. Maybe I’m greedy, but it is what it is.” 

Natasha said nothing.

He looked up at her with every emotion in the world writ large on his face. “I love him, Nat. And I know you love him too, and he loves you, and…” He hung his head again. “This is such a mess…”

She could have stayed silent for just a little bit longer and drawn more out of him, but the look on his face was one of such confusion and despair that she felt compelled to speak.

“Well…” She took a breath and took the plunge. “It doesn’t have to be.”

“Why not?” He raised his head to look at her again. “I don’t have any ideas.”

“I love him. You love him.” She hesitated a moment, and then said what she had known to be true all along. “And I don’t think he could be asked to choose between us. I don’t know if he’d be able to make that choice. Do you?”

Quite honestly, she wondered if it would break James or if he’d run away first. Which amounted to the same thing, really.

“No.” Steve hesitated again. “But is it fair for us to make the choice for him?”

He was so dense. Clearly the gentle approach wasn’t working.

“Well, I’m not going to choose to give him up.” She held up a hand before he could say something irritatingly self-sacrificial. “And before you selflessly tell me you that’ll you give him up if it means not coming between us, or something equally as boring, I want you think about that for a moment and decide how that would _really_ make you feel.”

“You know how it’d make me feel.” His eyes were locked on hers, though his voice wavered slightly. “If you know anything, you know that.”

She waited.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said finally, his eyes never leaving hers. And with the look in his eyes, it was a wonder his lower lip wasn’t trembling. “Not now. Not after… everything.”

She didn’t even need to ask what ‘everything’ was. There was so much encompassed in that one word - losing James, getting him back, losing him again. Dragging him kicking and screaming through recovery. What had happened between Steve and James only a few hours earlier. And, of course, what had been happening between Natasha and James for some time. 

Still, Steve needed hand-holding. And she found she didn’t mind so much anyway. Not for him.

Not for the three of them.

“I’m not giving him up,” she repeated, holding his gaze. “But… I’d be willing to share.”

For a moment, it didn’t register on Steve’s face. But when it did, the change that came over him was remarkable. There was disbelief, certainly, but there was also a kind of excited hope.

“Do you really mean that?” He set down his mug on the counter, his eyes never leaving her. “The way I think you mean it?”

“Well…” 

She thought of going for the casual shrug and quick joke, but she felt raw and vulnerable suddenly, too far removed from her customary cover of easy flippancy to make any joke land. And anyway, the moment felt far too important. Too real.

The truth, then.

“Why not?”

“Wow.” Steve’s eyes went unfocused for a moment, during which time she would have loved to see the images flashing through his mind. But then he came back to the present time and looked back at her with a smile slowly blooming on his face. “Okay, so how do we make that work?”

“Well…” Natasha returned the smile. “I have one idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a snow day! I have a snow day! I'm laying on my couch, enjoying my snow day! I hope the rest of you are enjoying your day as well, snowy or otherwise.
> 
> Hit me with your best comments!


	27. Triad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So,” she said without preamble, “I saw what the two of you were getting up to before.”_
> 
> _Oh._
> 
> _So that was it._
> 
> _Bucky sighed and pushed his hands through his hair. “Okay.” He licked his lips. “Okay then.”_
> 
> _“Yeah.” Steve blew out a shaky breath and looked at Bucky with what must have been the most earnest expression he’d ever worn. “And Natasha and I had a long talk about it, and she’s got a good idea about what we should do from here on out.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahem.
> 
> So this chapter is EXPLICIT. The rest of the story is rated MATURE, but this chapter most decidedly goes from mature to explicit. For... Valentine's Day?
> 
> Don't say I didn't warn ya.

**Avengers Tower**   
**same day**

Bucky went back to their barren, foodless suite in something of a daze. He took a shower and changed into a fresh set of clothes - a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, as there didn’t seem to be much point in wearing anything dressier. 

Not if Steve really wanted to pick up where they had left off when he returned.

The idea of that sent so many thoughts crashing through his head - nervousness and excitement, a bit of confusion and a lot of desire - that he very nearly crawled into the cold, empty bed and pulled the covers over his head.

But these weren’t bad thoughts. These weren’t thoughts that he wanted to run away from.

And neither did he want to run away from Natasha. 

He hadn’t forgotten about her at all, even if he had maybe gotten carried away in the moment with Steve. But that had been a good moment, and he didn’t regret it.

Nor did he regret anything he had done with Natasha.

Crawling into bed began to look very tempting.

There was nothing to eat and only water to drink, and Netflix felt significantly less entertaining with a glass of tepid water in his hand and too many competing feelings arguing for space in his head. He gave up on trying to watch anything after only 30 minutes. 

He considered going to the expansive Tower gym that he and Steve had been to a few times, but immediately dismissed the idea. Going at it alone brought up too many ugly memories as the Soldier - if he hadn’t been in cryo, then he had either been on a mission or training for one - and he didn’t want to think about any of that right then.

Fuck that.

He drank a glass of water, and then another glass of water, and felt near instant relief when Wanda texted him to ask if he wanted to come to her suite and order Vietnamese food and look at the new Ikea catalogue with her.

A moment later, he was at her door. 

They ordered several containers of pho and shrimp spring rolls and some interesting dishes that Bucky had never heard of, but that Wanda wanted to try. And they got about halfway through their pho and nearly all of the spring rolls - and paged through most of the Ikea catalogue - when Bucky considered telling Wanda what had happened.

He decided against it though. Better to just enjoy the company and the food and the catalogue. Better to just keep his thoughts to himself for a while.

It was a good way to pass a few hours. 

He returned to the suite with a container of pho in one hand and half a crispy scallion pancake in the other, and both Steve and Natasha were sitting on the couch as if they had been waiting for him.

Something prickled at the back of his mind. He had been caught for sneaking around and doing _unauthorized_ things before. Caught and badly punished for it, and for a second, he felt the urge to turn and run out of the suite.

But this was different. This was Steve and Natasha. 

They wouldn’t hurt him.

He licked his lips. Shoved part of the pancake into his mouth. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself,” Natasha responded. That small smile was on her face, as if she were in on some kind of joke that no one else was. She gestured at the food in his hands. “I should have known you’d have gone out for something to eat.”

Beside her, Steve snorted. “I’d be surprised if he ever made it more than four hours without getting something to eat.” The smile on Steve’s face - his whole demeanor, really - seemed jittery for some reason. 

Bucky looked from Steve to Natasha and back. Something was clearly up.

“There’s nothing to eat or drink in here.” He took another bite of pancake. “Now we have a container of pho, at least.”

“Which you’ll probably get up in the middle of the night and polish off,” Steve replied, a puff of nervous laughter coming from his nose. His right leg was jouncing up and down, and Natasha glanced down at it for a moment before putting her hand on his knee to steady it.

Bucky’s gaze lingered on that for a moment, before his eyes were pulled back to Natasha’s face.

“Why don’t you put that away, James,” she said, “and then come sit down.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, popping the last of the pancake into his mouth and moving into the kitchen to stick the pho into the otherwise barren ice box. Fridge. 

Whatever.

Something was very obviously up, but clearly they were only going to tell him when they were ready.

He came back into the living room to find that Steve and Natasha had separated on the couch, leaving a space between them for Bucky to sit. Which he did, and the whole thing felt so strange that he had idea of what he was supposed to say.

So he said nothing. He was very good at that.

Steve didn’t say anything either. That was unusual, and coupled with his earlier jitters, gave Bucky the idea that whatever was up, it was pretty important. And finally, after giving Steve a few significant (prompting?) glances, Natasha sighed.

“So,” she said without preamble, “I saw what the two of you were getting up to before.”

Oh.

So that was it.

Bucky sighed and pushed his hands through his hair. “Okay.” He licked his lips. “Okay then.”

“Yeah.” Steve blew out a shaky breath and looked at Bucky with what must have been the most earnest expression he’d ever worn. “And Natasha and I had a long talk about it, and she’s got a good idea about what we should do from here on out.”

“Oh?” Bucky started to ask, and Steve leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. And before he could even begin to react to that, pulling back and looking breathlessly at Steve, Natasha turned his head toward her with a deft finger under his chin and kissed him as well.

“Neither of us is willing to give you up.” Steve’s voice sounded husky. “But we did agree that we wouldn’t mind sharing.” He laughed shakily. “I wish I’d’ve thought of it before.”

Natasha pulled slowly away and looked at Bucky, her green eyes locked on his. “What do you think, James?” 

“I think…” Bucky paused to catch his breath. He felt as if he had just sprinted ten miles. “I think if you mean what I think you mean…”

“What do you think I mean?” Her eyes seemed to glitter as she swung a leg over him and straddled his lap. Steve leaned back over to kiss him again, and as he did, he reached up a hand and combed his fingers through Bucky’s hair.

And Bucky didn’t know where to focus his attention first. On the new, exciting feeling of Steve’s lips against his? On the familiar, but always welcome feeling of Natasha in his lap?

Steve pulled back, smiling so brightly that his whole face seemed to light up with it. His hand - the one that wasn’t caressing Bucky’s hair - came to rest on the small of Natasha’s back. 

Bucky looked between Steve and Natasha and couldn’t help what was probably the stupidest, most hopeful expression on his face.

“I think I must be dreaming,” he said quietly. “Because… because the idea that you both want… want this…”

That they both wanted _him_.

“I don’t even know where to start with that.”

“That’s all right,” Steve responded, a note of excitement in his voice. He brought his hand up to brush lightly against Bucky’s cheek. “I do.”

Natasha leaned in to kiss Bucky again, grinding her hips against his lap in a way that left no doubt as to where she wanted to start.

“You’re not dreaming, James,” Natasha whispered as she broke the kiss and reached up to stroke the side of his face. Her hand and Steve’s met briefly, and Bucky could almost feel a shock like static electricity. 

“We both want this, Bucky.” Steve continued to stroke Bucky’s cheek, his fingertips and Natasha’s moving in rhythm. “If you do.”

“Yes.” The word came out as a gasp. “Yes, I do.”

Bucky didn’t even know which hand to lean his cheek into, and Natasha was still moving on his lap in a way that made him wonder if wearing sweatpants had been the best choice.

Though judging by the smirk on her face, the answer to that was also yes.

“We should probably have done this before,” she whispered, bearing down harder on him and still grinding her hips. 

“We’ll just have to make up for lost time, I guess,” Steve said breathily as he buried his face in the side of Bucky’s neck and slid his hand between Natasha’s body and Bucky’s front. He caressed the solid muscle of Bucky’s stomach, moving daringly low as he did.

Bucky bit down hard on his lower lip as Steve’s mouth made fluttering contact with Bucky’s neck, sending a cascade of shivers rippling across his body.

Part of him hoped Steve would slide his hand under Bucky’s t-shirt. Maybe under his sweatpants. The other part of him knew he would finish right then and there if that actually happened.

And yes, what was happening was real. Yes, it was really happening. They both wanted him, even if he could hardly wrap his mind around the idea. 

He put one trembling hand on Natasha’s hip and the other on Steve’s thigh and just allowed himself to _feel_.

Steve’s hand found its way under his shirt. Natasha’s lips were soft against his own, and her body heat seemed to scorch him.

“Let’s go in the bedroom,” Steve whispered, his breath hot against Bucky’s neck.

Bucky _didn’t_ actually finish right then and there, but it was a very near thing.

Slowly, Natasha climbed up off of him and held out her hand to help him up. Steve got to his feet as well and took his other hand. And the two of them led him down the hall to the bedroom.

When the door clicked shut behind them, it sounded abnormally loud. Everything seemed to have intensified - sounds, sensations, everything. The lights were dim, but he could see everything he needed to.

Like Steve peeling off his shirt and tossing it aside before coming over to him. He had seen Steve shirtless plenty of times, but now it was different. Now he noticed every muscle and the way his chest rose and fell gently with his breath. 

Natasha approached him from the other side, a very familiar smile on her face that usually preceded the complete destruction of whatever room they happened to be in at the time.

So much was happening at once, Bucky didn’t know where to focus. 

He licked his lips and tried to smile. “We shouldn’t wreck the room,” he said shakily, hardly believing he was having the conversation at all. “Steve’s not used to it.”

“I can’t promise anything,” she replied with that same slight smile as she peeled off her own shirt and dropped it on the floor. “Sorry in advance, Rogers.”

“No problem,” Steve breathed, his hands on Bucky’s shoulders and his eyes on Natasha’s bare skin. “It’ll be worth it.”

Natasha sauntered closer, and after a glance between her and Steve, she put her arms around Bucky’s shoulders. Steve, meanwhile, had shifted behind Bucky and put his arms around Bucky’s waist. He lowered his face to Bucky’s shoulder, pressing his lips to the spot just past his shirt collar, while Natasha caught Bucky’s earlobe between her teeth and flicked it lightly with her tongue.

“You’re wearing too much,” Steve whispered in his ear. And he began pulling Bucky’s shirt up, over his head, and finally off.

Bucky was suddenly torn between self-consciousness - Steve hadn’t seen him shirtless, not in a sexual context - and desire, but then Natasha closed the gap between them, hands on his bare chest. 

“Better,” she whispered, palms warm against his flesh. “Much better.”

“Much,” Steve agreed, his breath hot against Bucky’s now-bare shoulder. His hands began to move gently, hesitantly, up and down the front of Bucky’s body, his fingertips tracing the contours of muscle and pausing every now and then. And was it his imagination, or were Steve’s hips moving as well?

No, it wasn’t.

Natasha, meanwhile, was still playfully nipping and suckling at his earlobe. One arm remained around his waist and the other reached up to trace along the ribbed surface of his metal shoulder. 

Bucky didn’t know where to put his hands. If he put them over Steve’s hands, Steve might stop moving them, and he didn’t want that.

Not at all.

His hands ended up at Natasha’s waist again. That was familiar territory, and that meant he could close his eyes for a moment and just feel everything that was happening.

Natasha pressed the front of her body against his, trapping Steve’s hands between them. Steve didn’t seem to mind. Far from stopping, his hands continued roving up and down Bucky’s bare torso, exploring Natasha’s as well. And the movement of Steve’s hips became much more pronounced.

As did the hard bulge at the front of his pants.

A smirk danced across Natasha’s mouth. “How you doing back there, Steve?”

Steve laughed breathlessly. “It’s pretty new territory.” He let his hand wander lower, his fingertips skirting the waistband of Bucky’s pants, pulling a gasp out of Bucky. “But I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

Natasha smiled and stepped back. “Take off your pants.” Bucky moved to do so, and she held up a hand. “Not you, James.” Her smile widened and she looked past him to Steve. “You. And then you can take off his.”

For a second, Steve didn’t move, but Bucky could hear the change in his voice that signified a very big smile.

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Steve stepped back, and Bucky turned to see him undo his belt. Natasha watched, hands on her hips and a very satisfied smile on her face, as Steve unbuttoned his pants, lowered his zipper, and slid his pants down. He stepped out of them, toeing them aside, and stood there in his boxer briefs. 

His substantial erection was obvious, and he did nothing to hide it.

“Very nice,” Natasha offered, her smile broadening. Her fingertips toyed with the waistband of her leggings as she turned her eyes to Bucky. “Now him.”

Steve locked eyes with Bucky, and Bucky could see the tiny shivers coursing through Steve’s body. He stood there, toe-to-toe with Bucky, his voice a breathy whisper.

“Your turn, Buck.”

His fingers trembled as he fumbled with the knot at the waistband of Bucky’s sweatpants, but then he got the thing loose and flashed Bucky a nervous smile.

They were really going to do this.

He slid Bucky’s pants down over his hips and legs, down and down until Bucky stepped out of them and Steve tossed them aside, and then there they were. Standing there in their shorts.

“Perfect,” Natasha murmured, and a second later, Bucky heard the soft sound of what had to be her leggings hitting the floor somewhere.

Steve moved closer to Bucky, his hands coming up to cup his face again, their foreheads touching. It was such a natural position - they’d done the same thing plenty of times before - but the fact that they were standing there in their underwear made all the difference. 

Along with the fact that Natasha had just taken off her pants as well.

“You boys are something special to look at,” she said with a smile in her voice as she came up beside them. She wore only her sports bra and a pair of plain green panties, and the look on Steve’s face when he saw her mirrored what Bucky felt. 

“You’re no slouch yourself,” Steve breathed, his eyes lingering on Natasha before flicking back to Bucky. He leaned his head into their embrace, breathing raggedly.

\---

Steve couldn’t believe it was happening.

Well, logically he’d known it was going to happen, of course. He and Natasha had talked it all out while they’d waited for Bucky, and he’d been under no illusions about what was going to happen that night. But thinking about it was one thing, and actually standing there in his underwear with Bucky and Natasha equally undressed was entirely another.

The more he thought about it, the more deliriously excited he became. 

He was going to make love to Bucky and Natasha. Both of them at once, probably more than once that night, and as many times after that as they all wanted. 

More than that, though, their friendships were going to be propelled to a higher level - the level a friendship could only reach under the most specific, rare, and special of conditions. 

Still, it was a big step to take. A scary step, knowing that everything was going to change. He’d been shivering with a combination of nerves and excitement all afternoon, and it was only getting more pronounced the closer they came to doing the deed.

He felt Natasha’s hand come to rest on his lower back with an electric jolt. He looked into Bucky’s eyes, saw in them the same anticipation he was feeling. And at that moment, there was no question in his mind about what should come next.

He kissed Bucky deeply, his hands still cupping Bucky’s face. And in that kiss was all the desperate emotion that had been quivering in his body all afternoon.

And Bucky returned the kiss just as eagerly, his hands mirroring Steve’s, fingers trembling against the side of Steve’s face.

“I’m not gonna lie,” Natasha murmured. “This is probably the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, boys.”

Steve couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up at that. Natasha had a knack for injecting levity into the sort of situations that most desperately needed it, and at that moment, he loved her for it.

“I guess we’d better give you a good show then.”

He didn’t know where he found the boldness to do it, but he moved his hips forward. And he didn’t stop until the bulge at the front of his tight shorts was pressed against the bulge at the front of Bucky’s.

Which dragged a very loud gasp out of Bucky and a hum of approval from Natasha. As well as a sharp intake of air from his own mouth.

He hadn’t been prepared for just how _good_ it would feel. And naturally, he found himself thinking about how good other things would feel. Especially once they’d all gotten rid of the rest of their clothing, little as it was. 

And even that thought managed to give him a thrill - how would it feel to see Bucky toss his shorts aside? Even better, how would it feel to take them off of him himself? And what about Natasha? What would it be like to see her naked for the first time?

He wanted to find out the answers to every one of those questions. And so, he hooked his thumbs in the waistband of Bucky’s shorts and looked him in the eyes. Asking the question without speaking a word.

Bucky licked his lips. Nodded. And that was all the assent Steve needed.

He pulled down, peeling the form-fitting shorts down over Bucky’s hips. Past the curve of his ass, past the point where his erection sprang free, nearly hitting him in the face as he dropped to his knees to pull them down the rest of the way. Down and down until they were off, and there Bucky stood as Steve gazed up at him. 

Natasha’s hand came to rest gently on the back of Steve’s head. “Do you want to?” she murmured, her other hand on the small of Bucky’s back. “I’m sure James wouldn’t mind.”

“No,” Bucky whispered, his voice trembling with the rest of his body. “No, not at all.”

Steve _really_ couldn’t believe it was happening.

He looked up at Bucky, past the jutting column of Bucky’s erection, and saw a look in his eyes that said Bucky was in just as much a state of delirium as he was. That even if neither of them could believe what was going on, they were both going to throw themselves into it wholeheartedly and take the ride all the way to the end. Wherever it might be.

He leaned forward, Natasha’s hand on the back of his head following him but not forcing or guiding him, and touched his trembling lips to the underside of Bucky’s shaft. Kissed it lightly, then again with more pressure.

Then gave it a slow, lingering lick.

Bucky let out a strangled gasp, his hand going to the back of Steve’s head, fingers entwining with Natasha’s. And Steve, suddenly emboldened, reached up a hand to grasp Bucky’s shaft and bring the head to his eager lips.

The appreciative noises Bucky was making kept Steve going. Kept his tongue and his lips working as he took in all the new sensations. The feeling of Bucky’s cock in his mouth. The taste. The smell. And above all, the knowledge of what he was doing.

What _they_ were doing.

But the sounds Bucky was making started to get louder, and the movements he was making started to speed up, and Steve knew he was getting close. And so he pulled back, Bucky’s erection popping free of his lips, and sat back on his heels looking up expectantly.

“Not yet, Buck.” He gave a small, breathy laugh. “Not this soon. We’ve got the rest of the night, haven’t we?”

Bucky was panting, straining to catch his breath, and he simply looked down at Steve with wide, needy eyes.

Natasha smiled. “We don’t want things to end too soon, James.” Her fingers trailed across his cheek, and he leaned into the palm of her hand. “We’re just getting started.”

Steve got to his feet, hooking his thumbs in the waistband of his shorts as he did and skinning them down. He kicked them aside and looked at Bucky, who licked his lips and murmured, “Wow.”

Natasha’s smiled widened. “Wow, indeed.” She turned her back to Steve, gathering her hair up as she did so, exposing the strap of her sports bra. “Do you mind?”

“No, ma’am,” Steve responded, a grin springing to his face. He’d seen Natasha in revealing outfits before, but he’d never seen this much of her. And now he was about to not only see more, but experience it as well.

He unhooked the catch at the back of her sports bra, then stepped back and let her do the rest. It would be much better to watch her take it off than to do it himself. And she did not disappoint, turning and sliding the straps down her arms, then letting the bra fall to the floor. Her breasts were spectacular, and Steve found himself staring almost openmouthed. 

“Wow,” was all he could say. And it occurred to him dimly that Bucky had said the exact same thing just a moment ago.

Bucky glanced at him. “Right?”

Steve looked over at Bucky, raising an eyebrow, and grinned. He’d suddenly gotten a vivid image in his mind - Natasha with her head thrown back in ecstasy, sandwiched between the two of them as they kissed and touched her, their hands occasionally drifting from her body to each other’s. 

How amazing would that be?

He moved behind Natasha, reaching out to put his hands on her waist as Bucky embraced her from the front. He pressed himself against her, feeling the bare flesh of her back against his chest and stomach and feeling the soft fabric of her panties - and the firm muscles of her ass underneath - against his madly twitching erection. 

His hands splayed out against her sides, stroking up and down as his fingertips curled around to her front to seek out the swells of her breasts. And soon enough, he was hefting them. They filled his hands, soft and weighty, her nipples pebbling against his fingers. 

And to feel her softness in the palms of his hands as the hard muscle of Bucky’s chest pressed against the backs of his hands was almost overwhelming.

Natasha leaned back against him and reached up to wrap her hands behind Steve’s neck. “Well,” she whispered. “Keep going.”

He rocked his hips against her, the length of the underside of his cock sliding up and down against her ass, and with his heart jumping wildly around inside his chest, let himself explore.

He couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. Too much was happening all at once for him to be able to understand any of it. He’d kissed Bucky for the first time ever. Taken both their clothes off. God, he’d sucked Bucky’s cock. He’d never even considered doing that with anyone, let alone Bucky, but now that it was happening, all he could think of was that he wanted more. Everything felt right.

He tweaked Natasha’s nipple between his fingers, loving the little gasp he pulled out of her as he did so, and looked Bucky right in the eyes. He wanted to see Bucky watching what was happening, wanted to see the look in his eyes and know that everything that was happening pleased him too. 

A small smile flitted across Bucky’s face. He trailed his hand - his metal hand, Steve noticed - down Natasha’s stomach, and further down until his finger slipped underneath the waistband of her panties. 

A moment later, Natasha sucked in her breath, her fingers tightening around the back of Steve’s neck. 

“Just like that, James,” she breathed. “Just like that.”

Somehow, the thought that Natasha wanted to be touched so intimately by Bucky’s metal hand made Steve even harder. He rocked his hips against Natasha’s ass, grinding his erection against her, and kept his eyes on Bucky.

And moved one hand from Natasha’s breast to Bucky’s chest.

“Feels so good,” he heard himself say, and he gave Natasha’s nipple another tweak, dragging another gasp out of her, as he caressed the bulge of Bucky’s pectoral muscles at the same time. 

Bucky’s eyes were fever-bright and focused, and Steve could feel him moving his hand steadily, and the breathless moans coming from Natasha were a heady mix of desire and need.

And it was all too much.

Natasha dug her fingernails into Steve’s neck suddenly, and her whole body went rigid, and her string of desperate, pleasure-soaked gasps and cries nearly made Steve finish right then and there.

He was certain the neighbors had heard, and something about that made it all the more exciting. Especially given who ‘the neighbors’ were, in this case.

A smirk danced across Bucky’s face, and Steve could only imagine what expression Natasha had to be making.

“All right,” Natasha said, and before Steve could even wrap his head around what was happening, her fingers tightened around his neck and she pushed off Bucky’s chest with her feet, and then suddenly she whirled up and around Steve’s shoulders before dropping him neatly on the bed, her thighs on either side of his waist.

She smirked down at him. “Scene change.”

He was closer than ever to just going over the edge. Especially with his cock pressed right against the juncture of her thighs, where he could feel an astonishing heat radiating from her even through her panties. But somehow - and he had absolutely no idea how - he managed not to lose it.

“You’re incredible,” he said breathlessly.

The bed creaked with Bucky’s weight, and then he settled down next to Steve, propping his head up in his hand. 

“I’ve been telling her that for years,” he murmured. “Apparently.”

Natasha smiled at him. “Actually,” and she ground herself into Steve’s lap almost conversationally, “the word you’ve always used is ‘impressive.’”

A flicker of a grin danced over Bucky’s mouth. “You’re both.”

“I can think of about a million adjectives right now,” Steve breathed as he arched his hips upwards and turned his head towards Bucky. He was close enough to kiss, and Steve did without hesitation. It was incredible, having both of them to focus on. Both of them to explore, to touch and taste and experience. And if tonight turned out to be just the first of many nights of the same, well…

“I could watch you boys do that all night,” Natasha purred, settling herself down onto him with all of her weight and rocking smoothly forward and backward. 

Steve’s eyes rolled back in his head as his cock throbbed under the heat and pressure. “If you keep that up,” he gasped, “I might not last all night.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Then what is that serum good for?”

Bucky snorted.

“Well, I can do this.” Steve grinned and reached down to take her by the waist and lift her bodily into the air. It wasn’t difficult; she was fairly light. And she used the opportunity to shimmy out of her underwear and toss it aside.

The carpet matched the curtains, Steve noted with a suddenly dry mouth.

Bucky must have caught the expression on his face, because he murmured, “Yes, Steve, it’s all natural.”

Natasha twisted out of Steve’s grasp and deftly ended up on the other side of Bucky. Without breaking eye contact with Steve, she leaned down and whispered into Bucky’s ear: “Now I want to watch the two of you.”

Steve barely had time to process everything he was feeling. They were all naked now, their clothes tossed aside and forgotten, and they were in bed together, and Natasha was sitting back with a smile on her face, ready to watch him and Bucky do… what?

Whatever they wanted to do, he realized with a jackhammering heart. 

He rolled over on his side towards Bucky, the two of them coming face to face, and he kept on rolling until Bucky was on his back and he was on top of him, and suddenly their bodies were touching. Their noses, their lips, their stomachs and chests, and - oh yes! - their erections as well. He let out a gasp at the feeling of Bucky’s hardness against his own, and his eyes widened.

“Hey there,” Bucky said breathlessly, voice trembling along with the hands that slowly snaked over Steve’s shoulders and settled at the back of his neck. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Steve replied shakily, his own hands coming up to touch the sides of Bucky’s face. It felt so right, so natural, that he wondered for a brief moment why they’d never done this before. Why their friendship had never, in all the years they’d known each other, gone in this direction.

But that was a question for another time. Right now, Steve didn’t want to miss a moment of what they were doing. Or what they were about to do.

He shifted his hips slightly, sucking in a deep breath as he did, and let himself feel the new sensations. Things he’d never experienced before, or even thought about. He could feel every little wrinkle and vein in Bucky’s shaft, pressed against his own. He could feel Bucky’s impressive musculature, so much more defined than it ever had been before. And he could feel Bucky’s breath hot against his lips as he began to rock his hips slowly and rhythmically against Bucky’s.

Somewhere, Steve was dimly aware of Natasha watching them, her breath occasionally hitching. He didn’t have to look to know that she was touching herself, but he did anyway. The sight of her with her hand at work between her legs made him harder still, and a slippery rivulet spilled out of him and made the friction between him and Bucky suddenly much easier.

“Oh, Bucky,” he panted, his hand against Bucky’s face as he and Bucky slid up and down against each other. “Oh God, this feels too good…”

They were rubbing against each other, growing slick with sweat and other things, and when Bucky suddenly rolled over and Steve found himself on his back with Bucky on top of him, everything suddenly became ridiculously, deliriously pleasurable. He reached his hands up under Bucky’s arms to hook his fingers over the tops of Bucky’s shoulders, felt hard muscle under his right hand and hard metal under his left, and the last thought that went through his head before the pleasure burst like a water balloon was _It’s Bucky._

Every muscle in his body tensed. He gripped Bucky’s shoulders and clenched his teeth and ground his cock against Bucky’s as everything inside of him turned white-hot and poured out of him, again and again and again until it was all over and he sagged back nervelessly into the pillow and the mattress.

Bucky made a sound of breathless astonishment, then mashed his lips against Steve’s mouth, his tongue probing for entrance, his hips still moving in a torturous rhythm.

“Oh yes,” Natasha moaned, her fingers still moving between her legs. “So beautiful. And I’m so close, James. So close.”

Steve opened his mouth to let Bucky’s tongue in, his own snaking out as well and seeking entrance into Bucky’s mouth, and he cut his eyes over to Natasha as he did so. She was so beautiful, and he wondered why he’d never noticed it before. 

It occurred to him right then that he was the luckiest man in the world.

A moment later, Natasha cried out in delirious pleasure, and that seemed to push Bucky right over the edge. He stiffened with a sharp gasp, eyes widening, and then he spilled endlessly onto Steve’s stomach before going nerveless and limp. He buried his face in Steve’s neck, damp strands of hair falling into Steve’s eyes, and the both of them sticky with sweat and each other’s fluids.

“Wow,” Steve panted, his breathing still ragged and his mind a complete jumble. He wrapped his arms around Bucky and hugged him as tightly as he dared, feeling their combined fluids squelch between them and not caring in the slightest. “We just did that. We really did it…”

Bucky grunted in response and didn’t bother lifting his head up.

But next to Steve, Natasha smiled a lazy, satisfied smile. “Yes, we did.” She reached over and stroked Steve and Bucky’s hair in turn. “Yes, we really did.”

“I can’t believe it.” Steve laughed softly and turned his head to look over at Natasha, returning her smile with an enormous one of his own. “But we’re not done yet, are we?”

“Jesus, Steve,” Bucky muttered into the side of Steve’s neck. “That wasn’t enough for you?”

Natasha’s smile settled into a smirk. “Sharon told me you had a ridiculous libido. Waking her up at three in the morning for another go around, after going for most of the night.” A beat, then, “I always assumed she was exaggerating.”

“She told you…” Steve felt himself reddening, and he floundered for a moment. He wondered what other little tidbits Sharon had told Natasha, and just as quickly realized he’d probably find out sooner rather than later. 

He sighed, wrapping his arms more tightly around Bucky and giving him a kiss on the side of the neck for good measure. He didn’t want to move him; he liked the reassuring weight of Bucky’s body on top of his own. And given that they were both naked and spent, it seemed appropriate for them to still be lying in each other’s arms.

“No,” he said finally, “she wasn’t exaggerating. I’ve always been a bit overactive in that department.” He sighed. “Not exactly what you’d expect out of Captain America, I know.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” That lazy smile drifted across Natasha’s face again. “Red-blooded American male, all about freedom and patriotism and sex. Seems legit.”

Bucky snickered, breath hot against Steve’s neck.

Steve raised an eyebrow at Natasha. This was such a bizarre conversation to be having, but in light of what they’d all just done, it actually seemed in keeping with the mood of the night. 

“So is that what comes to mind when you think of me?” He chuckled. “How much of my sex life is actually private?”

Before Natasha could reply, Bucky sighed and rolled off Steve and onto his back. “Is anyone else hungry? I could eat.”

“Seriously?” Steve laughed incredulously, propping himself up on his elbow and looking over at Bucky. He was now very acutely aware of the fact that his whole front was covered in their combined jism. “Your appetite, Bucky, I swear. Is there a time of day when you’re not hungry?”

God, he loved him.

Natasha sat up slightly, propped up by one elbow, and looked over at them both. “He’s always hungry after sex. That’s never changed.”

“Well,” said Steve, no longer feeling shunted to the outside by acknowledging it, “you’d know better than I would.” He smiled broadly and let out a chuckle as he reached over to run a hand over Bucky’s chest. “What do you feel like eating, Buck? We’ll get it delivered.”

They would eat, and talk, and hold each other, and probably fool around some more, and it was all going to be okay now. Steve found he was smiling with a kind of happiness he’d never known he could have.

It was all going to be okay now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me with your best (sweaty) comments!


	28. Morning Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Finally, Bucky said, “Why’s that?”_
> 
> _“Because I don’t regret a thing.” Steve opened his eyes and gave Bucky a small smile. “Except maybe how long it took me to realize that this was the way to deal with things.”_
> 
> _Bucky traced a finger up and down Steve’s arm. “So what happens now?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're back!
> 
> If they're ["speaking like this,"], then they're speaking in Russian.

**Avengers Tower**  
**the following morning**

Steve drifted out of sleep to the dawning realization that the previous night hadn’t been a dream. He knew this because he was still naked, curled up front-to-back around an equally naked Bucky, who was face-to-face with a just-as-naked Natasha. 

It had really happened. 

He felt the urge to cheer, to laugh triumphantly, to fling open the window and shout it out to the whole world. Of course, all he wound up doing was smiling so broadly his cheeks began to hurt and hugging Bucky as tightly as he dared without waking him up. But he was pretty certain the message had come across just as well.

Last night, he thought with a wild thrill running up his spine. Last night had been beyond his ability to describe.

They hadn’t stopped after that first time. They’d ordered food - Natasha had made them all throw on bathrobes when it came, her reasoning being that she wasn’t going to suffer their antics becoming public knowledge because a delivery boy had gotten an eyeful - and eaten. But after they’d eaten, the robes had come off again, and they’d kept going well into the night.

Natasha had climbed atop Bucky and ridden him slowly, while Steve had lain down next to Bucky and interlaced their fingers. Then he and Bucky had traded places, and he’d clenched Bucky’s hand with everything he had as he spilled into Natasha’s clutching damp heat. Natasha had sat back and watched, idly toying with herself, as Bucky had taken Steve’s cock in his mouth and worked him to an explosive finish with his lips and tongue. Then Steve had buried his own face between Natasha’s thighs and feasted on her while Bucky kissed her and they both ran their hands through Steve’s hair. Bucky had made love to Natasha while Steve had worked a lotion-slicked finger into his ass. 

Finally, after they’d all fallen into an exhausted pile, their last fully conscious act was to put Bucky in the middle, between the both of them. Their hands had roamed lazily over each other for a while, but sleep had reached out to grab them before too long. And the last thought that had drifted through Steve’s mind before he’d fallen into the foggy darkness was _This is how it’s supposed to be._

And now he was awake, while Bucky and Natasha slept on beside him under the covers. The king-sized bed seemed almost cramped with the three of them in it, but Steve didn’t mind a bit. Being pressed against Bucky with Natasha’s arm draped over them both was just more evidence of the previous night being real. And he wanted as much of that evidence as he could get.

He reached over gently, leaning across Bucky’s body to brush a stray tendril of hair away from his face.

Bucky grunted and shifted slightly, but otherwise continued to sleep. He had always been a heavy sleeper. And Steve, suddenly realizing that he wanted very badly for Bucky to be awake so he could share some of the excitement he felt, began to lightly scratch at Bucky’s scalp through his hair.

It took a few minutes, but Bucky gradually came around, blinking slowly into a faceful of Natasha’s hair. A slow smile spread across his face and he shifted around until he was facing Steve.

“Hey there,” he said softly. 

“Hey,” Steve whispered back, his smile broadening again. “How are you doing?”

Bucky was silent for a moment. “Kind of sore.” He licked his lips. “Not in a bad way.”

Steve chuckled, the chuckle coming out almost like a giggle, and hugged Bucky even tighter. “I’m sore in the sort of way that makes me look forward to when I can make myself sore all over again.”

Bucky huffed in astonishment. “Jesus, Steve. We went all night.”

“Yes we did.” Steve grinned, images of it flashing through his mind and making him stir again. “But then we went to sleep, and now we’re awake again.”

“Well…” Bucky said slowly, and the wheels in his head were obviously turning. “I guess we could stay in…”

“Oh no you won’t.” Natasha didn’t even turn over. “You’re not skipping out on therapy today. Not today, not any day.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Steve chuckled, lifting his head slightly to look past Bucky at Natasha, who hadn’t stirred in the slightest. “Morning, Nat. How long have you been awake?”

“Long enough.” She snorted. “I’m awake, but I’m not _awake._ Just awake enough.”

“Just awake enough for what?” Steve couldn’t help it. His secret had been let out of the bag last night; he was what Sharon had once termed a ‘horndog’. And now Bucky and Natasha knew it. “‘Cause I’m awake too.”

“So am I,” Bucky said quickly. “So let’s all stay in and-”

“Absolutely not.” Steve cut him off before he could finish trying to weasel out of going to therapy. “You’ve got therapy this morning, and you’re not getting out of it no matter how sweet you make the deal sound.”

“Lay down the law, Rogers,” Natasha mumbled into her pillow.

“Look, after you get back we can do anything you want.” Steve smiled and rested his forehead against Bucky’s. “Including breakfast wherever you like and as much staying in as any of us are capable of.” 

Bucky snuggled against him, one hand resting on Steve’s waist. “But I don’t need it now.”

Natasha didn’t even stir. “Yes, you do.”

For a moment, Bucky was silent. “But we wouldn’t have done this,” he said slowly, “if I still needed therapy.”

Steve propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Bucky. “You think you don’t still need therapy just because the three of us had a breakthrough last night?” He shook his head. “Buck, it’s only because of the therapy that we were able to do that at all. And you’ve still got an awful long way to go, especially considering what happened the other day.”

Bucky said nothing. He just glowered.

“He’s right, James.” Natasha finally rolled over, her hair an absolute mess and her expression the special sort of surly that could only be managed by someone who’d just been woken up. “Last night might have changed a lot, but it doesn’t magically make you mentally healthy.”

Bucky looked from Steve to Natasha and then back to Steve, his eyes widening with sudden realization. 

“That’s right,” Steve chuckled, his eyes meeting Natasha’s. “It’s coming at you from both sides now.” His eyebrows lowered and the smile faded somewhat. “But you’re going to therapy, and that’s that. You’ve still got a lot to work through.”

“Yeah, fine,” Bucky muttered. “But just remember, I’m the one who suggested we stay in and have fun. You’re the one kicking me out.”

“Oh, boo hoo.” Natasha sat up suddenly and stretched, and Steve got a very nice view of her breasts. “You heard Captain America: go to therapy, then we get breakfast, then we buy some lube, and then we can come back and have more fun.”

Steve definitely stirred at that.

“He’s going to need a shower before he goes to therapy.” He smiled over at Natasha, somehow tearing his eyes away from her exposed flesh to look her in the eyes. “And so will I, come to think of it.”

“We all do. None of us are stepping out of here with this level of funk.” Natasha slid out of bed and headed toward the bathroom without bothering at all to cover up. “You boys figure out breakfast.”

Steve and Bucky’s eyes tracked her appreciatively across the room until the door was shut and it was just the two of them left in bed together.

“So,” Steve offered softly, feeling suddenly anxious now that they were alone. Everything had changed last night, and yet it felt like some things hadn’t changed at all. Sleeping together couldn’t change what he and Bucky had meant to one another before, could it? All it could do was bring them closer together, provided Bucky wasn’t having second thoughts.

God, he hoped not.

“So,” Bucky echoed. Hesitated. “Breakfast?”

“Sure,” Steve murmured. “But we’ve got some time now. Time to just talk.”

He didn’t expect Bucky to lead the conversation by any means, or even to offer too much in the beginning. So he took the lead himself, taking a deep breath and plunging in headfirst.

“I’ve been wondering...” His fingertips idly tracing an indeterminate pattern on Bucky’s bare shoulder. “Are you all right with everything that happened last night?”

Bucky was silent for a long moment, but a series of expressions flitted across his face - wariness, confusion, fear - and his eyes widened slightly.

“Why?” His voice was very quiet. “Are you not?”

“Are you kidding?” Steve cocked an eyebrow and grinned in the face of Bucky’s apprehension. “I’m over the damn moon.”

Palpable relief spread over Bucky’s face, and Steve hastened to continue. 

He shifted closer to Bucky, wrapping his arms around him and nestling his head against Bucky’s. “I fell asleep last night thinking that everything was going to be all right from now on.” A slow smile spread over his face as he talked. “That you’re back where you belong, and Natasha and I don’t have to fight over who gets to be with you, and you don’t have to choose between the two of us, and it was such a huge relief.”

“You wouldn’t have fought over me.” Bucky frowned. “Would you’ve?”

Steve frowned, thinking about it for a moment. In all likelihood, Bucky having to choose one of them over the other would’ve been a lot worse than a fight - it would’ve been the slow and terrible end of his friendship with Natasha. It would’ve meant lingering resentment between the two of them forever, and in light of what they’d done last night, it made Steve shudder to even entertain the thought.

“The point is, it doesn’t have to come to that now.” Steve hugged Bucky again. “And I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”

“I don’t think it would have come to that.” Bucky snuggled against Steve, wrapping his arms around him. There was very little space left between their naked bodies. “But… this is better.”

‘You said it.” Steve closed his eyes, pressed his lips to Bucky’s forehead, and took a moment to appreciate just how well things had worked out. 

Bucky had so much further to go with his recovery, but at least he’d made progress. HYDRA had tried to get him back, but they’d been thwarted at every turn. Lukin had tried to take control of him again, but Steve and Natasha had been able to undo it. And now, the three of them could move forward together.

He wondered again, as he had the previous night, why he and Bucky had never crossed the line before. Why their friendship had never taken that final step and become a romance. They’d been close enough, after all; no one in the world knew him better than Bucky, and there was no one in the world he knew better than Bucky. In hindsight, it would have made perfect sense for them to have gotten together. 

Of course, society in general wouldn’t have been so keen on a pair of men getting together in the ‘40s. There was still an awful lot of stigma attached to it in modern times, and gay marriage had only been recently legalized. What kind of a life would they have been setting themselves up for back then?

But he supposed it wasn’t so important now. Whether they might have gotten started earlier or not, they’d certainly gotten started last night. And Steve wasn’t about to go back now.

“It felt right,” he murmured against Bucky’s forehead, his eyes still closed. “More so now that I can look at it in the light of day.”

For a moment, they simply lay there, holding each other. 

Finally, Bucky said, “Why’s that?”

“Because I don’t regret a thing.” Steve opened his eyes and gave Bucky a small smile. “Except maybe how long it took me to realize that this was the way to deal with things.”

Bucky traced a finger up and down Steve’s arm. “So what happens now?”

“We keep doing what we’ve been doing for the past couple of months.” Steve shrugged, his smile broadening at Bucky’s touch. “We keep fighting HYDRA, we keep trying to make the world a safer place, and we keep doing it together.” He planted a kiss on Bucky’s forehead. “And when we go home, we go home together too.”

Bucky smiled - it was a small smile, true, but an actual smile. “We’ve already been doing that.”

“Yeah,” Steve replied with a big smile, “but it’s different now.”

His lips met Bucky’s, easily and without hesitation. It was almost as though they’d melted together, the line between them too blurred to tell where he ended and Bucky began. And for a while, that was all that he had any interest in.

\---

As Natasha rinsed the conditioner out of her hair, she was pleased that she had thought to bring her own toiletries from her suite the night before. Steve had a lone, half-empty bottle of Head and Shoulders shampoo and a thin sliver of Irish Springs soap in the shower, and she knew for a fact that neither he nor James would see anything wrong with that.

Which meant she would very probably need to start keeping toiletries at Steve’s condo as well, once the place was fixed up and he was cleared to move back in.

She realized she was smiling as she toweled herself off, and she practically bounced on her heels on the way back to the bedroom, towel wrapped around her body and hair loose and damp.

The boys were wound around each other, still very naked, the sheet twisting around their muscular bodies. Steve had his fingers tangled in James’ hair, and James had his arms around Steve’s shoulders, and they were both kissing each other like they had plans to take it further in the next few minutes.

Something delicious and strange and new fluttered in her stomach. They hadn’t even noticed her come in, and she took a moment to appreciate the view.

“So,” she finally said. “Therapy soon?”

Steve raised his head slightly, breaking the kiss and looking at her over James’ head. “Soon enough,” he said with what sounded like a hint of regret that he couldn’t keep playing tonsil-hockey with James. “Who gets the shower next?”

“James,” she said, and James groaned, but he didn’t argue either. He slid half-heartedly out of bed and stood up, his substantial erection obvious for all to see, and headed toward the bathroom. Steve’s eyes followed him every bouncing step of the way.

[“Fine.”] He smirked at her as he walked past. [“But don’t forget, I was the one who suggested we stay in bed.”]

She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t resist swatting him on the ass before he shut the bathroom door. Then she turned and looked at Steve.

“Hope I wasn’t interrupting anything important.”

“Nothing that was going to end up going anywhere,” he replied with a slightly sulky look on his face, though his eyes betrayed the smile hiding behind it. He lay there on his back, reaching his hands up to fold them behind his head. “It’s probably a good thing you came in when you did, though, or else we might’ve gotten carried away and Bucky would’ve missed his appointment.”

“Yeah.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “He’s not missing that. Not for us, not for anything.”

“I know.” Steve took his hands out from behind his head and put them up defensively, palms out. Then he grinned. “Still, it’s not an easy temptation to resist, is it?”

She looked at him for a moment. He had left plenty of room for her to make an easy joke, but it died on her lips, and simple honesty came out instead.

“I’ve never been able to resist him.” She shrugged. “We’ve never really been able to resist each other.”

“Yeah,” Steve nodded, the grin fading away to be replaced by that look of sincerity he had always been able to wear so easily. “I’m really glad you two found each other again, Nat. You make him really happy, you know.” He smiled. “And I see how happy he makes you.”

She shifted on the bed, resting her back against the headboard and stretching her legs out in front of her. 

“It’s easier for you to say that now, isn’t it?” She slid open the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out the hairbrush she had stashed there the previous night. “A lot of the tension’s been drained off.”

“Well, yeah.” He looked a bit bashful at that, but he recovered quickly. “But that’s not the only reason.”

He sighed, sitting up in bed with the sheet around his waist and leaning forward. “I didn’t want to lose him, and I didn’t even know exactly what that meant. I didn’t even understand how I wanted to keep him until yesterday. And now…” He shook his head. “Now I can see everything so clearly. It’s like looking at it with a new pair of eyes.”

“I know.” She stared down at the brush in her hands. “I spent years telling myself we hadn’t really been in love. That it had never meant anything. That…”

She couldn’t bring herself to vocalize all of the thoughts she had tormented herself with for years. Clint knew. Laura knew. For now, that was enough.

“Well.” She took a breath. Began pulling the brush through her hair. “I think I understand where you’re coming from.”

“Hey.” His face was suddenly clouded with concern. He leaned forward, reaching out to rest a hand on her arm. “It’s all right now, isn’t it?”

She lowered the brush and looked at him. His eyes were very earnest.

His eyes were almost always very earnest. It was painfully sweet and achingly transparent at the same time. 

“Well, it was some pretty great sex, if that’s what you mean.” The joke didn’t quite land. She could see it in his painfully earnest eyes, and she sighed and shooed his hand away. “Come on, tell me what it is that you so clearly see now. I want to hear that.”

“The way I feel about him.” Steve looked out into space, his eyes unfocused, as though he were watching something on a screen only he could see. “He was my best friend for as long as I can remember. We were practically joined at the hip growing up, and even when I was set to throw everything away on the slim chance that I could save him, I never thought any farther than that. That he was my friend, and that was all.” He shook his head. “How dense am I for not seeing what was there all along?”

“You are pretty dense,” she agreed, and very much enjoyed the glower he gave her in return.

“I love him,” he said simply. “On every possible level. He’s my best friend, he’s practically my family, he’s all I’ve got left from a world that doesn’t exist anymore, and now he’s my fella too.” He smiled, shaking his head. “I never even thought I’d go that way. But now, I can’t understand why we never did before. How crazy is that?”

“It’s pretty crazy that you just used the word ‘fella.’” She smiled. “As for the rest of it, well…” Another shrug. “You are pretty dense, Rogers. I had noticed all of this months ago.”

“Well then.” He smiled that gentle, earnest smile up at her again. “It’s a good thing we’ve got you, isn’t it?” 

For a moment, she simply focused on brushing her hair. Well, brushing her hair and turning his words over and over again in her mind.

Finally she said, “So what happens now?”

He blew out a long breath, and looked down at his hands for a moment before looking up at her again.

“Well,” he said, “I hope last night wasn’t the end of things for the three of us. I love Bucky, and I know you do too, and he loves the two of us, and…” He took another deep breath before going on. “Even if I hadn’t really given it a lot of thought before - and looking back on it, I can’t understand why - I think you and I have something between us too.” He looked cautiously hopeful. “Don’t we?”

She looked at him. “You’re very…”

Good Lord, he was just so _earnest._

“... you,” she finished, smiling and shaking her head. “You’re very you. Never change.”

He smiled, looking down at his hands again. “Dr. Erskine made me promise not to.” He chuckled. “He said it was the whole reason he chose me for the experiment. And I’ve always tried to keep that in mind, no matter what.”

He had a way about him that was almost painfully open and honest. His earnestness wasn’t forced, it wasn’t a put-on, but it was disarming all the same. In the face of his Boy Scoutish personality, her layers of mannerisms that she’d carefully cultivated as a defense mechanism over the decades seemed almost flimsy in comparison. He’d never need that sort of armor, she realized, not like she did. He was unique in that way.

It was impossible not to like him, she thought with a smile. Unthinkable. Just as impossible as it was not to follow his lead in the field, and just as unthinkable as it would be to let him down.

“You’re sweet,” she finally said. “You’re very sweet.”

\---

Bucky took longer than normal in the shower. There were a whole bunch of new toiletries available, and so he tried the “moisturizing, energizing tea tree mint and lavender” shampoo, along with the “milk and honey intensive hydration” body wash. Afterward, he brushed his teeth with cinnamon and clove toothpaste, which felt a hell of a lot fancier than the Crest that he and Steve always used.

Natasha had clearly stocked the shower at some point.

He was probably supposed to be thinking very deeply about what had happened. Weighing it in his mind, debating the pros and cons, and considering if last night’s events had been the right thing to do or not.

Except that he wasn’t a total fucking moron.

It felt great.

And anyway, he had real concerns - the General was still out there, the doctor was apparently in SHIELD custody somewhere, and there were words in Bucky’s head that could blank his mind and wipe away all of the progress he had made.

But he would worry about all of that later. 

Last night had been great, and even though they were making him go to therapy anyway, they would all go to breakfast after that and then come back and spend the afternoon making each other feel good. Steve had no regrets, and it didn’t seem like Natasha did either.

He wrapped the towel around his waist (though he briefly debated if that was really necessary) and headed back into the bedroom.

“I smell like lavender and honey and cinnamon,” he announced.

Natasha smiled. “That makes two of us.” She gestured to Steve. “Rogers here smells like dried sweat and sex.”

Steve shot her a look. “Hey, if smelling a bit ripe is the price I have to pay for a night like we had last night, then I’m fine with that.” 

Natasha smirked. “Yes, but you’re making the rest of us pay the price as well.”

“Fine.” Steve let out an exaggerated sigh as he flipped the sheets off of himself and stood up, stark naked. “I’ll go take a shower. But while I’m in there, you guys ought to change the sheets. If I smell bad, they probably smell worse.”

“Well, I don’t recommend turning the lights off and running a black light over them,” Natasha said.

“Why?” Steve looked at her blankly. “What would that do?”

Bucky smirked and locked eyes with Natasha, who mirrored the expression back at him. Which only made him shake his head, which in turn made Steve burst out with, “What?”

“Go,” Natasha finally said. “Go shower. Please.”

And as Steve headed off to the bathroom, shaking his head, Natasha turned to look at Bucky with a wry smile. [“It’s way too easy to get him going.”]

[“Yeah.”]

Honestly, Bucky was usually content to just watch Steve and Natasha banter back and forth. It made him smile when they did that.

It felt like home.

He looked at the sheets critically. [“Now that you mentioned the black light, I don’t want to sit down.”]

[“You shouldn’t,”] she replied, taking off her towel with a smile and tossing it onto the middle of the bed. She opened the closet door, reaching in for a small duffle bag, setting it down on the nightstand, and unzipping it. [“Not now that you’re clean, anyway.”]

He watched her for a moment, but knew better than to ask her not to get dressed. She’d only tell him he had to go to therapy. Instead he said, [“You planned this.”]

[“You and Rogers wouldn’t have,”] she replied with a smile as she stepped into a pair of panties and started putting on her bra. [“So I had to. All things considered, I think it worked out for the best.”]

[“Yeah, but…”] A frown skittered across his face, but didn’t settle there. [“You planned it down to storing clothes in the closet. This wasn’t spontaneous at all.”]

[“No.”] She turned to him with a raised eyebrow. [“The two of you making out in the hospital bed when you didn’t know I was there; that was spontaneous. And if things had gone as far as I expect they would have, how do you think the two of you would have felt afterwards?”]

Bucky sighed, let his towel drop to the floor, and walked to the closet. Not that he had a lot of choice in outfits, but he spent a moment staring at his options anyway.

[“It just kind of happened.”] He didn’t look at her. [“I would have never… I didn’t mean-”]

[“James, stop.”] She cut him off, actually reaching her hand up to place her fingertips against his mouth, and smiled gently at him. [“I know you wouldn’t have done it to betray me, just like I know how much you both would have beaten yourselves up about it afterwards. Just like I know you wouldn’t have been able to stay away from each other regardless.”] She raised an eyebrow at him, still smiling. [“So I had to think of a way to make it all work out without any bad feelings.”]

Without hesitation, he slid his arms around her waist and pulled her close against him. [“You’re a lot smarter than the both of us.”] He inhaled the faint scent of mint and lavender in her damp hair. [“We’re lucky to have you. _I’m_ lucky to have you.”]

[“He said almost exactly the same thing.”] She smiled, her arms wrapping around him as well. [“I can’t believe how much alike the two of you are sometimes.”]

Bucky shook his head. [“I’m nothing like him.”] He ran his fingers up and down the smooth skin of her back and briefly considered unhooking her bra.

But no. She’d make him go to therapy anyway.

[“You’re a lot more like him than you might think,”] she replied softly, stretching up onto her tiptoes to touch her lips lightly to his. [“And you don’t give yourself nearly enough credit for it.”]

He hugged her gently. [“If you say so.”]

[“I do,”] she said simply, looking up into his eyes with a soft smile. [“You’re a good man, James. So much more so than I ever knew.”]

He didn’t know what to say to that, and the silence stretched out between them. Finally, and just to break the silence, he said:

[“You’re going to make me go to therapy anyway, aren’t you?”]

[“I already said I was.”] Her smile became a playful smirk, and she planted another light kiss on his lips before tugging away from their embrace. She dug back into her overnight bag and pulled out a pair of jeans, which she began to pull on. [“And what gives you the idea that anything at all would keep me from making sure you go?”]

[“The fact that I’m standing here naked and ready to go?”] Off her look, he shrugged. [“It was worth a try.”]

[“Between the pair of you boys, I don’t know how I’m ever going to get any sleep again.”] She shook her head, still smirking, but there was a questioning look in her eyes for a moment.

[“Are you…?”] Bucky licked his lips. Forced himself to ask the question. [“Are you having second thoughts? Or regrets?”]

Quickly he started pulling his clothes on. Her answer was much more important than whatever the hell he might end up wearing that day.

[“No,”] she said, shaking her head and smiling. [“No second thoughts at all. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve hit the double jackpot and I’m not going to look back.”] She cocked an eyebrow at him and rummaged in her bag for a shirt. [“But I want you to think about things too, and make sure there’s nothing you might find yourself uncomfortable with.”] 

Bucky looked at her. [“Like what?”]

The wry smirk returned. [“Like Rogers chasing after me with his insatiable libido, for example.”]

[“Oh. That.”] He suddenly became very interested in buckling his belt. It felt weird to say the words otherwise. [“No, I… I liked watching the two of you together.”]

She laughed suddenly, and he wasn’t sure if the relief he heard in that laugh was real or imagined.

[“I certainly enjoyed watching the two of you together,”] she said as she pulled on her shirt. [“In fact, that might have been my favorite part about last night.”]

[“Then…”] He looked up and at her, practically vibrating with what he realized were nerves and excitement. [“Then I guess this works for the both of us.”]

He couldn’t wait to see what came next.

After therapy, that was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back after a month. With both this story and _Project Regenesis_ , I always had a backlog of chapters waiting to be posted, that way I never felt rushed and was able to keep a pretty consistent updating schedule. But... life got busy and I burned through the backlog faster than I could write more chapters. So I took a month off to build the backlog up again, and now here we are! Let the story continue.
> 
> As always, feed the author.


	29. Words That We Couldn't Say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“All right, Buck, just try and relax.”_
> 
> _Steve felt nervous and uneasy. What they were about to do struck him as a bad idea for any number of reasons, but apparently it was the only way to get rid of the back doors Lukin had built into Bucky’s mind._

**the Tower**  
**a few days later - July**

Over the next few days, the contractors had finished work on Steve’s kitchen, and Tony Stark had started on the new security system. According to Steve, that meant they could move back home in the next week or so, depending on how long it took Stark to be satisfied with the whatever he came up with.

Seeing as how stupidly easy it had been for anyone ever to get into Steve’s apartment, Bucky hoped that Stark would come up with something extremely satisfying.

In the meantime, Steve had been busy with Edgar Lascombe, the captured HYDRA agent. More than agent, really. A HYDRA commander - and that meant he had brought in expensive, high powered lawyers to fight the charges of terrorism that had been levelled against him. He was still locked in a cell somewhere on the Helicarrier.

Bucky would have been happy to just throw Lascombe off the Helicarrier, but apparently that wasn’t an option.

“I don’t see why it’s not an option, Steve,” Bucky said, while helping Steve change the sheets once again on their big bed in the suite. 

“For the twelfth time, Buck,” Steve said with an exasperated look as he shook the top sheet out with a snap, “you don’t get to murder the guy just because the justice system works a bit slowly.”

“Well, it would make it easier,” Bucky muttered, and he knew the rest of the conversation would go exactly the way it always did.

Steve was stubborn that way.

Great in bed too, which was why they were changing the sheets while Natasha took a shower.

Bucky had a lot of fun even thinking those thoughts.

“And anyway, Buck,” Steve said in a tone that clearly indicated he thought the conversation was over, “throwing him off the Helicarrier wouldn’t be justice. Not even poetic justice. It’d just be petty.”

Yep, the conversation was going exactly the way it always did.

Bucky snorted. “It would make everyone feel better.”

“Not me.” Steve folded his arms. “I’d actually be pretty mad at you.”

“Mad about what?” 

They both turned to see Natasha coming out of the bathroom in a towel, accompanied by a cloud of steam and wearing a look of distinct disapproval. “You boys haven’t been arguing about trivial things again, have you? You know how that always ends.”

Bucky and Steve exchanged a glance, but Steve responded first.

“I was just reminding Bucky that throwing people off of high places isn’t the solution to all of life’s problems.”

Natasha smirked. “Says the man who had me kick Jasper Sitwell off the roof to get information out of him.”

Bucky looked wordlessly at Steve.

“Thanks, Nat.” Steve seemed to deflate. His shoulders sagged, and he gave Natasha a wry look. “Thanks. For that.”

“No problem, Rogers.” She moved to the closet and retrieved the outfit she had hung there the night before. “What are friends for?”

Bucky loved watching the two of them - in bed or just bantering back and forth. Either way was fine with him. He was just happy to be in the middle and part of it all.

Lately he had felt so warm and even relaxed, and it had taken him a while to realize that what he was feeling was happiness. He had talked it over with both Dr. Levitt and Darien Nash, and he and Wanda had talked a little about it the other day too, while eating Korean takeout and making a wishlist of Ikea items from the catalogue. 

“True happiness can be a rare commodity,” she had said, circling a bright green bookcase named Kallax. “And everyone wants a piece.”

“I want a piece of that Kallax,” Bucky had replied through a mouthful of japchae. “Though maybe white instead of green.”

“High gloss white or regular white?”

He considered that for a moment. “High gloss,” he finally said. “Ikea furniture should be shiny.”

Wanda nodded. “Very true.”

He wasn’t used to feeling so happy.

“James?” Natasha’s voice snapped him back to the present. “Where’d you go?”

Steve was looking at him with an eyebrow raised. “You weren’t thinking about throwing Lascombe off the Helicarrier again, were you?”

Bucky scowled. “You have the one track mind, Steve, not me.”

Natasha snorted.

“Of course my mind’s going to stay on track.” Steve put his hands on his hips. “Especially if it means keeping you from getting into any more trouble.” He pulled out his phone to check the time. “And speaking of which, we’d better get a move on. Your appointment’s coming up pretty soon.”

Bucky’s scowl deepened. 

Ten minutes later, they were stuffed into the Mark V (though as usual, they had made Steve sit in the backseat) and flying toward the Xavier School. Even though the last appointment with Jean Grey had only been two weeks ago, Natasha had called and made a special appointment with her. Because of the words that were in Bucky’s head.

Words that could wipe away all of the progress he had made.

Words that could turn off his mind.

He didn’t like the thought of it, but he couldn’t risk pretending it wasn’t a real issue either. He wasn’t safe to be around, not so long as those words were in his head. 

“Not that it isn’t a pleasure to see you all again,” Hank said as he walked them down the hallway toward Jean Grey’s office. “But I hadn’t expected you back for another week at least.” He grinned toothily. “It was the duduk music that got you, wasn’t it?”

“What’s a duduk?” Steve raised an eyebrow.

“It’s an ancient double-reed woodwind flute made of apricot wood,” Bucky recited. “Indigenous to Armenia, and commonly played in pairs.”

Steve looked back and forth between Bucky and Hank for a long moment. “You two have been spending an awful lot of time together.”

“You can’t possibly fault me for attempting to broaden the boy’s musical horizons while catering to his already expansive palate.” Hank looked at Steve over the rims of his round glasses. “I’m offering him a comprehensive education on two fronts, Steven.”

“Yeah, Steven.” Natasha glanced at him. “Get with the program.”

A moment later, they were in their usual places in Jean Grey’s office, seated around a small, circular coffee table with a tea service placed on the top, along with a notebook and pen.

“Iced chamomile tea today,” Ms.Grey explained. “Iced for the weather, chamomile for the relaxation, which I understand you could all use a bit of.”

Bucky took a small sip of the tea. It wasn’t bad. (The tea in Ms. Grey’s office was never bad.)

“I understand we’re looking for something a bit different today,” Ms. Grey continued, crossing one leg over the other and settling into her chair. “So it’s not going to be like the past two memory walks.”

“No, ma’am.” Steve shook his head. “There’s something in Bucky’s head - some kind of conditioned-in secret code or something. We need to find it and get rid of it, and hopefully any other little triggers we didn’t know about.”

Ms. Grey nodded and looked at Bucky. “And I’m guessing you don’t remember any of the words in the code?”

Bucky stared into his glass. “No.”

“Well.” She took a long pull on her own glass of iced tea. “Let’s get started then.”

Bucky exhaled slowly, and then he and Ms. Grey were floating through an endless landscape of frozen images, like stills from a moving picture. She sorted through them, flicking them aside one by one with an easy effortlessness that had to come from being the world’s most powerful telepath.

“Where are Steve and Natasha?” 

“Back in my office, drinking iced tea.” Ms. Grey waved another image aside. “Ready to take notes when I ask them to.”

She paused in front of an image that made Bucky’s insides twist: he was seated helplessly in front of the General in that empty apartment in Kyiv, waiting for the worst to happen.

“Found something,” Ms. Grey murmured.

It wasn’t too long before she had found everything. 

They were in the office again, seated in the same plush chairs. Bucky felt slightly groggy, but Natasha’s face looked grim and Steve had that stubborn clench to his jaw that suggested he wasn’t happy with something. A notebook of words sat in Natasha’s lap.

Bucky reached for the iced tea. “That only took a few minutes.”

“No.” Natasha shook her head. “It took a few hours.”

“Look at all of this.” Steve gestured to the notebook, his eyes flashing and his expression stormy. “Is this all from Lukin? Or is this just a collection of everything all the way back to the beginning?”

“We can’t go back to the beginning yet,” Jean explained. “We haven’t unlocked those memories.”

“So this was all Lukin.” Natasha’s expression hardened. “He wanted absolute control, didn’t he?”

“Well, he didn’t get it.” Steve’s eyes narrowed in determination. “No matter how hard he tried. And he’s never going to get it.”

Bucky sipped at his iced tea. 

\---

“All right, Buck, just try and relax.”

Steve felt nervous and uneasy. What they were about to do struck him as a bad idea for any number of reasons, but apparently it was the only way to get rid of the back doors Lukin had built into Bucky’s mind.

“It’s going to be rough on him,” Jean had said as they were walking out, “but I can’t just remove the triggers from his mind without doing damage in the process. The triggers themselves are all one-time uses only though, so once they’ve all been used, he’ll be in the clear.”

“Even the words that turned him into the Winter Soldier again?” Steve had been doubtful. “I don’t know how we’re going to get him back from that again, short of hitting him in the head hard enough to knock him out.”

“You won’t have to,” Jean had responded. “That series of words was a failsafe. A factory reset option, if you will. You won’t have to worry about that again.”

Steve looked over at Natasha with wary doubt on his face. They’d had Bucky lie down in bed, seeing as how he’d described himself going limp and falling to the ground when Lukin had triggered the shutdown command. He was now lying on his side with his head in Natasha’s lap, and Natasha was gently combing her fingers through his hair. 

The notebook was on the bedside table, flipped open to the page of trigger words, written in Natasha’s neat hand. None of the words were in Russian, Steve had noticed, and Natasha had guessed that Lukin had opted for uncommon words that were unlikely to be uttered in everyday speech. 

_I’m not looking forward to this,_ Steve said to Natasha with his eyes.

Natasha gave him a look in response that seemed to sympathize, but she followed it up by clearing her throat. “I think we should get started now.” She held Steve’s eyes for another moment, and didn’t look down at Bucky until after Steve had finally nodded his assent.

“Are you ready, James?”

Bucky nodded once. “Do it.”

Steve picked up the notebook and squinted at the first word, a group of tangled consonants and vowels he had no idea how to pronounce. He didn’t even know what language it was in, though he guessed it might have been Hawaiian or some such.

“Mami…” He frowned and squinted harder. “Mami-hilla-pin-tap-eye?”

Bucky looked back up at Steve questioningly. Steve waited for something to happen, cautiously looking back and forth between Bucky, Natasha, and the unpronounceable word on the paper.

“Well?” Bucky finally said. “Did it work?”

“I… don’t know.” Steve looked doubtfully down at the paper. “Weren’t you supposed to have an epileptic fit or something?”

Bucky scowled. “I don’t know, Steve. Do you want me to have one?”

“No.” Steve looked up from the paper to fix Bucky with an exasperated look. “But I do want this to work, and I don’t think it did. How the hell do you pronounce this anyway?”

Natasha reached over for the notebook, frowned at it as well, and sounded it out silently, her lips moving as she tried to work her way around it. Finally, she looked down at Bucky.

_“Mamihlapinatapei.”_

The effect was instantaneous. Bucky went stiff as a board, his eyes opening wide and his muscles clenching for a split second before sagging back limply against the bed, a look of sickening blankness in his eyes.

“Oh God.” Steve lunged forward, reaching out to put his hands on Bucky’s shoulder and face. He looked up frantically into Natasha’s eyes, seeing a hint of startled worry there as well, and then started searching for Bucky’s pulse. Finding it a second later, he was only marginally relieved - Bucky’s heart was beating uncomfortably fast.

Natasha murmured something soothing in Russian and continued to stroke Bucky’s hair. The awful, glazed look in his eyes didn’t waver.

“Come on, Buck,” Steve found himself saying as he rubbed Bucky’s face with the palm of his hand. “Wake up. Come back. This is freaking me out.”

The minutes dragged by interminably. Just when Steve was about to start slapping Bucky’s face instead of massaging it, Bucky blinked a few times, the focus slowly returning to his eyes.

“Okay,” he said slowly. Breathlessly. “Okay, I think that worked.”

“Oh thank God.” Steve felt himself almost sag with relief, and he cupped Bucky’s face in both hands. And before he even knew it, he was kissing him hard on the lips. 

“Are you all right, Buck?” Steve asked when he pulled back. “You just turned off, all at once.” He shuddered. “It was pretty terrifying.”

“Save it for later, Rogers.” Natasha’s voice was gentle. “We’re going to need it.”

“Yeah.” Bucky licked his lips and exhaled shakily. “Yeah, I’m fine. Next one.”

“You’re sure?” Steve looked doubtfully over at Bucky. “You look like you could use a minute to get it together.”

“Yes,” Bucky said through gritted teeth. “Do it.”

“All right.” Steve picked up the notebook again, hesitating for a long moment as he looked Bucky over, then took a deep breath and read.

“Ick-sewer…” He frowned. “No, that’s not right. Ickts… _iktsuarpok._ ”

Bucky gasped loudly and once again stiffened for a split second before collapsing limp and blank eyed on the bed. 

Once again, Natasha continued to stroke his hair and murmur in Russian, though her tone seemed somehow more urgent.

“This is making me sick.” Steve clutched the notebook in his hands and looked down at Bucky in near-anguish. “We’re hurting him, Nat. There’s got to be a way to do this without hurting him like that.”

Natasha ran her fingers gently down the side of Bucky’s face. “If there was another way, Jean would’ve given it to us.” 

He reached down to touch Bucky’s face again, his fingertips encountering Natasha’s. It made him feel physically ill to think that the only way to undo the horrible damage that Lukin had done to Bucky’s mind was to repeatedly send him into fits. He loved Bucky more than anything in the world, and the knowledge that he and Natasha were going to have to keep on hurting him in order to help him was getting harder and harder to handle.

“I don’t want to keep watching him go into fits, Nat.” He laced his fingers together with hers and continued to stroke Bucky’s cheek. “And I don’t know how much more of this he’s going to be able to take today.”

Bucky gradually came around, his breathing unsteady and his lower lip trembling. 

“Okay.” He swallowed. Sucked in a shaky breath. “Keep going.”

“Are you serious?” Steve gaped at him. “Buck, you at least need to take a breather. I don’t know if going through these triggers one after the other is a good idea. It sends you into fits; it can’t be healthy for you.”

Bucky worked his expression into a glare, though it was tinged with exhaustion. “Keep going.”

“James…” Natasha started, but Bucky cut her off.

“Keep going.” He looked up at Natasha, his eyes both pleading and determined. “I want this out of my head. I want it all out of my head.”

Steve looked down at Bucky, hating the pain and fragility he saw there. And in that instant, he knew exactly how Bucky must have felt when they were kids. Looking down at skinny, sickly little Steve, knowing he was going to get beat up sometime just by virtue of being who he was, and trying to convince him to keep his big mouth shut. All the while knowing that everything he was saying wasn’t going to make a damn bit of difference.

“All right, Buck.” Steve swallowed hard. “I love you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Bucky tried for a wobbly smile, but it didn’t land. “I know, Stevie.”

For a moment, Steve didn’t speak. He didn’t move; he barely even blinked or breathed. He felt a lump rise in his throat and felt his eyes grow blurry and hot.

Bucky hadn’t called him that in three quarters of a century.

Steve tried to talk, but the words seemed to get stuck on the way from his brain to his mouth. He wanted to tell Bucky how hearing him say just that one word somehow meant more than all the other fantastic developments of the past few days. But somehow, he found himself just muttering “Aw, Buck,” and leaning forward to put his arms around him.

Natasha’s fingers found their way into Steve’s hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. “All right there, Captain Maudlin?”

“He hasn’t called me ‘Stevie’ since 1945.” Steve was glad his voice was muffled by Bucky’s shoulder; he was sure it wasn’t nearly as steady as he would’ve liked it to be.

“You pick the weirdest times to be sentimental,” Natasha said, but there was a smile in her voice.

“C’mon, Steve.” Bucky squeezed his arm. “Keep going before you lose your nerve.”

“All right, all right.” Steve took a deep but shaky breath and sat upright again. He gave Bucky a smile that was meant to be encouraging, but probably came off as unsteady as it felt.

He reached for the notebook again.

On the third trigger word - _‘mencolek’_ \- Bucky broke out into a sweat when he came back to himself. On the fourth - _‘greng-jai’_ \- his face turned a pale shade of lime. And on the fifth - _‘myötähäpeä’_ \- he rolled over and vomited violently into the wastebasket.

“We need to stop.” Steve turned to Natasha, his hand between Bucky’s shoulderblades and his face drawn in pain at Bucky’s predicament. “We can keep going later, but for God’s sake, he can’t take much more of this.”

“I can,” Bucky gasped without lifting his head from the wastebasket, his whole body shuddering terribly. “Keep going.”

“You’re starting to worry me, James.” Natasha looked down at them with a deep frown. “If triggering these things one after the other is making you have epileptic seizures, doing too many more at once might hurt you more than it helps.”

“How…” His breath hitched and he spat into the wastebasket. “How many more?”

“Five.” Steve pressed his hand down harder on Bucky’s back, hard enough to feel the knobs of his spine, trying to massage away the nausea. “Just rest now, Buck. You’re not doing any more of this today.”

“I want…” Bucky rolled onto his back, head once again in Natasha’s lap, his face pale and shiny with sweat and his breathing shallow. “I want this… out… out of my head. I want this out.”

“So do I.” Steve caught Natasha’s eyes for a moment, and he smiled. “So do we. But it’s making you sick. Look at you.” He gestured at the sheen of sweat, at the wastebasket Bucky had just puked his guts up into. “I don’t even think you can stand up, let alone take any more of these shocks.”

Bucky exhaled a shuddering breath. “I-”

“No, James.” Natasha cut him off, her voice gentle but firm. “I’m not letting you do any more. Not now.” She reached down to brush a few damp tendrils of hair off of Bucky’s forehead. “You need to rest.”

Bucky was silent for a long moment. Finally he rolled out of Natasha’s lap and onto his side. “All right,” he murmured. “Okay.”

He was asleep before Steve and Natasha left the room.

In the following hour, Steve ordered food and cleaned out the wastebasket before settling down on the couch with Natasha. They didn’t say an awful lot to one another, but it was comforting to just sit there on the couch with her curled up against him. Her head fit very nicely onto his shoulder, and his arms looped around her all by themselves, and for a while he was content to just be.

Just as Steve was tipping the Chinese food delivery man, Bucky appeared in the entryway to the living room. He still looked pale and washed out, but he was steady on his feet.

His eyes tracked the bag, heavy with cartons of food, in Steve’s hand before Steve set it down on the coffee table. “You said there were five more.” He looked at Steve. “Only five. I want to keep going.”

“I don’t know, Buck.” Steve looked uneasily back and forth between Bucky and Natasha. “You don’t look like you could take too much more.”

“I can take a lot, Steve.” Bucky exhaled slowly. “I’ve been taking much worse for, what, seventy years? I want this gone.”

Steve looked at him for a long moment, unsure and uneasy. Part of him was tempted to remind Bucky that those things that had been done to him for seventy years had broken his mind. That the only reason for the lawyers and the doctors and the therapy and the declaration of mental incompetence had been the severe damage his mind had sustained thanks to Karpov and Lukin’s ghoulish tampering. He didn’t want any part of something that might damage Bucky’s mind even worse.

And yet, he realized as he looked over at Natasha, Bucky was right to want those things out of his mind. After all, what was the point of the therapy if not to give him his own mind back? What was the point of all their planned rehabilitation if not to get him to the point where he could make his own choices again? Be his own man again?

“All right,” Steve finally sighed. “But the second it looks like you can’t take it anymore, we’re stopping again. And this time, we won’t pick it back up again until tomorrow night.” He looked over at Natasha. “Agreed?”

Natasha nodded once. “Agreed.”

The shuddering, the sweating, and the vomiting all repeated themselves over the course of the final five words. Steve held Bucky’s hand the entire way through, and Natasha kept Bucky’s head in her lap with her hands firmly on his temples. On the second-to-last word - _‘bilita mpash’_ \- Bucky’s eyes rolled back in his head and he convulsed briefly before falling limp. Steve was beside himself with fear until he finally, after an interminable three minutes, felt Bucky weakly squeeze his hand. And on the final word - _‘pelinti’_ \- Bucky was so still for so long that Steve was terrified they’d put him into a coma.

Or killed him.

But finally - _finally_ \- Bucky stirred. 

“Is it…?” Bucky’s whole body shuddered violently, and Natasha rested her hand on his sweat-slicked forehead. “Is it done? Are we done?”

“Yes.” Natasha bent forward, her lips gently brushing over Bucky’s forehead. “That was the last of them.” 

She looked up again, her eyes meeting Steve’s, and he had a sudden feeling of exhausted triumph. However hard it had been to watch - and he knew it had been a thousand times harder for Bucky to actually go through - it had all been worth it. 

“No more trigger words,” Steve said with a smile, putting his own hand on Bucky’s cheek. “You’re free.”

“Good…” Bucky managed an exhausted, wobbly half-smile, but his eyelids were drooping and it was obvious he was fading rapidly. “That’s good.” He glanced up at Natasha. “That’s good, right?”

“Right.” Natasha smiled down at him, but raised an eyebrow at Steve. “And now you need to sleep. No arguments, no excuses.”

She got out of the bed, gently lifting Bucky’s head off of her lap and placing it just as gently on the pillow. Steve moved forward to pull the sheet and duvet over Bucky, and they both planted a quick kiss on his lips before moving away.

Bucky was probably out cold before the door even clicked shut behind them. And when he’d closed the door, Steve found himself letting out a sigh of contentment and looking over at Natasha. A smile passed between them, and Steve reached out to put an affectionate arm around her waist.

“Come on.” He gestured towards the living room with his head. “There’s some Chinese food and a picture calling our names.”

Steve unpacked the Chinese food while Natasha poked through Bucky’s Netflix queue, and before too long they were cozied up side by side on the couch, dinner spread out in front of them and a picture called _The Grand Budapest Hotel_ on the screen.

It was nice, Steve thought with a smile. Enjoying dinner, a fun and quirky picture, and pleasant company was a simple but indescribably satisfying thing. Especially when all their lives were full of the kind of stresses ordinary people never imagined and would thankfully never experience. Sometimes, he reflected as he slurped up a mouthful of noodles and met Natasha’s wry look with an innocent shrug, the simplest things wound up being the most enjoyable.

“Steve.” Natasha’s voice had a note of humor in it when she called to him a few hours later. “Come take a look at this.”

He tossed the last of the empty Chinese food cartons into the trash and came into the hallway. Natasha stood in the doorway of the bedroom, shaking her head at him with that two-millimeter smile of hers that somehow still managed to light up her whole face.

“Look at him.” She pointed at the bed, where even in the darkness, Bucky’s sprawled posture was immediately obvious. “He takes up the whole bed.” The smile even managed to reach her voice. “Who sleeps like that?”

“Him.” Steve shrugged expansively, his own face breaking out into a smile. “As far as I know, he’s the only one. You should have seen what I used to have to put up with, sharing the bed with him when we were kids.”

“I can imagine.” Natasha turned to look at him, resting her upper back against the door frame. “And I’ll bet you never once thought to sleep on the couch instead.”

“Not once.” He shook his head, smiling. “It was the principle of the thing, really.”

“Mmm-hm.” She raised an eyebrow and tilted her head towards the bed. “So what are you going to do about him tonight?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “Hang on a sec. Let me try and consolidate him.”

He crawled into bed, thankful he was already wearing his sweats, and started to gather Bucky’s splayed limbs in. Bucky protested in that muffled way he had when he was still asleep, but Steve only needed to shush him gently to put a stop to it.

“It’s all right, Buck, go back to sleep.” And he did, which seemed to please Natasha to no end as she climbed into bed on the other side of Bucky while Steve wrapped his arms around him to stop him from spreading out again.

“Love you,” Steve whispered into Bucky’s ear as he closed his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, those are all words sourced from various languages. You can look them up if you're so inclined. (Probably you are not, but that's okay. I looked 'em up for you!)
> 
> Also, _The Grand Budapest Hotel_ is a crackfest of a movie, and I highly recommend it. 
> 
> As always, comments are what keep an author going, so send 'em my way.


	30. Churrascaria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Natasha shook her head. “I’m definitely sleeping in my own bed tonight, away from you boys.”_
> 
> _Sharon raised both eyebrows and looked at Natasha over the rim of her wineglass._
> 
> _Natasha smirked. “Oh, did I say that out loud?”_

**the next week - July**  
**back in Brooklyn**

“Wait.” Steve’s eyebrows knit. “Are you telling me I have to let that thing shine a laser in my eyes every time I want to get in my front door?”

“It’s a retinal scanner, Methuselah.” Tony was fiddling absently with a Rubik’s Cube as he spoke. “Stores the biometric data of any individuals with access to the apartment. As many as you like; JARVIS has a pretty extensive memory.”

“JARVIS?” Steve looked at Tony incredulously. “Oh come on, Tony, don’t tell me you put him in my house…”

“Joking.” Tony tossed the Rubik’s Cube up into the air, grinning and shrugging in faux-apology, then plucked it out of the air left-handed and twiddled with it again. “I kept it simple and low-tech. Even worked in a couple of big-button keypads, perfect for looking at cluelessly over the rims of bifocals.”

They’d been standing there in Steve’s newly-restored kitchen for a good twenty minutes, talking over the specifics of the new security system. Tony had spent a good five days tinkering around with it, accompanied by his ever-present one-armed mechanical assistant, and from the grin on his face and the incessant ribbing, he must have been pleased with the outcome.

Steve was pretty pleased with it as well, he had to admit. Even if he’d miss the simplicity of a key in a lock, the fact was that none of them could afford that low a level of security anymore. Not while Lukin was still out there, not when eight assassins had shown up to kill him, and especially not now that things had gotten established with Bucky and Natasha.

Tony finished the puzzle, glanced at it for a moment, and tossed it over to his robot assistant. The robot fumbled it, naturally, but Tony seemed not to notice as he turned his attention back to Steve. 

“All right then.” He smiled and clapped Steve on the shoulder. “You’re all set. I’ll show myself and Dummy out. Oh, and be careful of the delay on the retinal scanner. If you don’t get a positive scan within five seconds, the automated machine gun turrets activate.”

Steve looked at him warily. “You’re joking, right?”

“You’ll have to find out for yourself.” Tony grinned as he walked out. “Ciao.”

From the couch in the living room, Bucky said, “Do you think he’s joking?”

Natasha shrugged. “You heard him. You’ll just have to find out.”

Steve headed back into the living room, leaning against the wall as he came near. “I wish I knew for sure that he didn’t put in robot guns.”

Bucky snorted at that.

Steve shook his head, chuckling. “I guess I should just be glad he didn’t leave his shop assistant here to wash dishes for penance or something.”

He looked across the room at Bucky, who seemed very relieved to be back home. He hadn’t enjoyed their stay in the Tower too much, Steve knew, and he’d spent nearly the entire time telling Steve he would rather have been back here. It touched a spot deep in Steve’s heart, knowing it meant so much to Bucky to be home.

“Are you telling me you would’ve minded a dish-washing robot shop assistant?” Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Because that sounds like striking gold, in terms of free help.”

“Yeah, well, that particular robot’s apparently a bit of a klutz.” Steve smiled and folded his arms. “I don’t know how many of the dishes would get washed and how many we’d end up having to replace.”

Bucky shrugged. “That would just mean another trip to Ikea.” He glanced at Natasha. “They have meatballs there.”

“You can just buy the meatballs, you know.” Natasha arched an eyebrow at Bucky and crossed her legs at the knee. “And another freezer, while you’re at it, to keep all the meatballs in.”

“No.” Bucky shook his head. “We tried that. It’s not the same.” He pulled out the Turvino’s delivery menu from his back pocket. “Their apple pie is good for taking home though.”

The rest of the evening went predictably well. The three of them sat together on the sofa, draped comfortably across one another as they ate their way through dinner. Afterwards, they headed to bed, and it was still such a wonderfully new thing to climb under the covers with Bucky and Natasha and lose himself in all the new sensations it was possible for three people to create together. 

As the three of them drifted off to sleep, Steve’s final act was to drape an exhausted arm over Bucky and smile. His fingertips came to rest on Natasha’s shoulder as well, and so he fell asleep touching the two people he felt closest to in all the world.

He woke up early the following morning, and even before he opened his eyes he realized he was smiling. The three of them had shifted around in their sleep,and now they were a disjointed tangle of limbs with Bucky in the middle. It felt so wonderfully decadent to lie there in the blue-gray twilight just before the sun was due to come up, Bucky pressed against him and Natasha draped over him as well, luxuriating in the sensations of just _being_ there. 

But breakfast wasn’t going to make itself.

Still smiling, he disentangled himself from the pair of them - Bucky grunted briefly and then slumped back into the mattress; Natasha didn’t react at all - and padded quietly out of the room. And after giving his teeth a quick brush and his face a quick splash, he headed for the kitchen.

He was in the middle of frying the sausage and bacon, when he turned to see Bucky and Natasha stumbling zombie-like into the dining room. Bucky wore a pair of Steve’s sweatpants and no shirt, and his hair was a godawful mess. Natasha had on one of Steve’s t-shirts, which looked like a sundress on her, and her hair was worse than Bucky’s if such a thing was possible.

They were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

“Morning, guys.” He couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he gave the sausages a poke. “Isn’t this a great day?”

Bucky grunted in response and slumped into one of the chairs, while Natasha managed a muttered, “Coffee, Rogers,” before doing the same. And the looks on both their faces were so grouchy and sullen with sleep that Steve nearly burst out laughing.

“Nice early start to the day.” He grinned, tipping the bacon onto a plate before pouring two mugs of coffee and setting them down in front of Bucky and Natasha. “There’s just something about waking up in time to see the sun rise that lets you know it’s going to be the kind of day that makes you glad to be alive.”

Bucky glowered at him.

Natasha stared into the coffee. For a moment, Steve thought she might tip over and fall asleep. It suddenly struck him that this was a side of her he’d never seen before. She’d always been perfectly composed, her appearance neat and put-together even at the oddest hours. But seeing her groggy and sleep-rumpled filled him with warm affection.

He was seeing her real self; that was what it was. Her unguarded self, free of any pretenses or masks or layers of defense against the world. And he was so happy to see it that he came over to her, smiling, and kissed her on the cheek.

“Anybody ever tell you you look like a million bucks when you first get out of bed?” he said, smiling.

Bucky half-heartedly fumbled with the sugar bowl, spooning a generous amount into his coffee. “You sweet talking my girl, Steve?”

“Isn’t she our girl now?” Steve chuckled, coming over to put his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and plant a long kiss on his cheek. “Or do you just want me to toss some of the sweet talk your way too?”

“Neither.” Natasha sipped at her coffee. “I want you to get back to breakfast. Those eggs aren’t going to scramble themselves.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Steve grinned, looking across at her over Bucky’s shoulder before heading back to the stove.

The rest of breakfast didn’t take too much time to cook, and before long the three of them were sitting down around a pile of sausages, bacon, waffles, and eggs. 

“I’m going to have to start cooking like this every morning.” 

Steve stirred milk and sugar into his coffee and looked across the table at Natasha. None of them had brought up the idea of her moving in yet, but it seemed fairly inevitable. Bucky had already made the place his home. By rights, Natasha ought to have the chance to do the same. 

“If you’re going to be staying here.”

Bucky glanced at Natasha over a forkful of waffle.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything about staying here?”

“Well…” Steve’s eyebrows knit in sudden consternation. “I just… it seemed like the next natural step, you know?” He gestured across the table. “Bucky lives here. If we’re all going to be together, it just doesn’t make much sense for you to be living in the Tower by yourself.”

Natasha smiled over her coffee. “That’s where all my stuff is.”

“So we’ll bring your stuff here.” Steve waved it off dismissively. “Between me and Bucky, I’ll bet we could do it in less than an hour.”

“I don’t doubt it.” She leaned back into her chair and took a sip of coffee. “But it’s also where my job is. Quick, easy commute.”

“We commute too.” Steve shrugged and smiled over at Bucky. “It doesn’t take too long. Besides, don’t you think it’d be nice to be able to get away from work when the day’s over?”

“Let’s see where things go first, Steve.” She said the words gently. “This is still very new.”

Bucky said nothing. Steve suddenly felt very unsure of himself. After everything that had happened, he’d just naturally assumed that the three of them would want to live together. After all, Bucky hadn’t been able to get out of the Tower and back to Brooklyn fast enough. And Natasha had never seemed to have any particular attachment to her suite in the Tower. Was she having second thoughts?

God, he hoped not. He felt cold through the middle thinking about it. After getting so close, sharing so intimate an experience both physically and emotionally, Steve didn’t know how he’d handle trying to go back. And what about Bucky? If Natasha pulled back from them both… 

“I like it,” he said softly. “New or not.”

Natasha studied him for a moment. “I’m not having second thoughts, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Bucky poked at a sausage with his fork. “That’s what he’s thinking.”

Natasha put a hand on Bucky’s arm. “But that’s not what I’m thinking.”

“So what are you thinking?” Steve drank his coffee. “‘Cause I’m thinking we’re going to miss you if you stay at the Tower and we stay here.”

“Well, luckily I’m only a quick bike ride away. Besides,” she set her coffee cup down, “did you pull a U-Haul up in Sharon’s driveway on your second date?”

Bucky snorted into his orange juice. Steve winced.

“Moving quickly with Sharon wasn’t my problem.” He took another sip of coffee. “Pretty much the opposite, actually. We probably had more arguments about my fear of commitment than anything else.” He set down the mug and looked across the table. “And it’s not a mistake I want to make again.”

Natasha smiled and shook her head. “You really are a man of extremes, you know that?”

Bucky smirked. “He has no chill.”

“None.” Natasha picked up a forkful of waffle and took a bite.

“All right.” Steve sighed, putting his hands up in surrender before forking another bite of bacon into his mouth.  
If Natasha wasn’t looking for a way out of this new relationship they’d made, and all she wanted was her own living space while she got used to a new definition of normality, that was good enough for him. 

“But hey, the offer stands, all right?” He smiled. “This is your home if you want it to be.”

Twenty minutes later, while Steve and Bucky loaded the dishwasher and Natasha took a shower, Steve received a text from Sam.

**Hey man, Brazilian steakhouse tonight? Sharon knows a place.**

Steve smiled at the phone, then looked over at Bucky. “Hey Bucky, feel like finding out how they cook steak in Brazil?”

\---

“Wow.” Steve looked around the inside of the restaurant with what could only be described as awe. “Apparently the way they cook steak in Brazil is to never stop cooking it.”

The waiter had just gotten finished explaining how _rodízio_ dining at a _churrascaria_ worked: if the green side of the disc was facing up on the table, the waiters would continue to offer endless selections of barbequed meats. If the red side of the disc was facing up (which Bucky couldn’t really imagine happening), the waiters would stop bringing meat to the table.

“Thus ending the meat parade,” Sharon said, right as the waiter returned with a bucket of cold Brahma beer. 

Natasha smiled. “Have you seen these boys? It’s going to take a while to end the meat parade.”

Wordlessly, Bucky began to uncap the beer bottles and pass them around.

“Unless they end up too drunk first?” Wanda took a small sip of beer. “Not bad.”

“Nah, check this dude over here.” Sam inclined his head toward Steve. “Can’t get drunk apparently.”

“Not so far.” Steve smiled and took a pull at his beer. “But I can fill up on beer, which is why I plan to take it easy tonight.” His smile turned into a grin. “I want to eat so much steak they’ll have to take me out of here with a crane.”

Natasha smirked. “So… no different than usual?”

Bucky snorted into his beer. 

“I figured Steve would like this place.” Sam beamed over at Natasha. “If anybody would dig a restaurant where they don’t stop bringing you meat till you beg them to, it’d be him.”

“I’m still working on why I haven’t heard of this before.” Steve raised an eyebrow at Sam and Sharon. “You guys were holding out on me.”

Bucky settled back in his head and nursed his beer. Across the table, Natasha caught his eye and winked at him, and a small smile drifted across his lips as Steve and Sharon and Sam continued to banter back and forth, with the occasional well-placed comment from Natasha or Wanda.

He liked this - just sitting there with this two favorite people in the world, along with three others who were good, decent people, listening to everyone talk and joke and laugh.

Then the waiters started coming by with skewers of meat, and the night got even better.

“We should just move here,” Bucky finally said, through a mouthful of what was probably his sixth or seventh portion of picanha-style steak. “Sell the condo.”

Wanda finished off a _linguiça_ sausage. “But where would you sleep?”

Bucky shrugged. “Under the tables. Maybe in the kitchen.”

“We’re not selling the condo.” Steve shook a forkful of bacon-wrapped filet at Bucky. “Even if we could live in a place that has never-ending meat.”

“Really?” Sharon raised an eyebrow. “Even for that?”

Natasha sipped at her glass of sangria (the girls had long since switched to ordering pitchers of the stuff). “Consider your answer carefully now, Rogers.”

“I am.” Steve put on a very obvious thinking face as he chewed his mouthful of steak. “Maybe we should get Tony to put one of these places in the Tower.”

Sam took a long pull on his beer. “I’m here for that.”

“Of course, you’d never leave the Tower again,” Sharon pointed out.

“No.” Sam grinned. “No, I wouldn’t.”

The waiters continued to come around with meat skewers, along with the occasional skewer of glazed, grilled pineapple, and Bucky soon lost track of how much he had put away.

At one point, Wanda got up to fill her plate at the salad bar, but Bucky didn’t see much point in wasting his time on vegetables.

“I think I need to unbutton my pants,” Sharon announced, determinedly working her way through a portion of bacon and parmesan-wrapped pork.

“One step ahead of you,” Natasha mumbled through a mouthful of spicy chicken.

Sam drained off the remainder of his most recent beer. “I think I’m starting to get the meat sweats.”

“Lightweight.” Steve grinned and gestured at Sam’s plate. “I’ll take the rest of that sirloin if you’re going to tap out.”

“Who said I’m tapping out, man?” Sam lightly swatted Steve’s hand away. “I said I was sweating, I didn’t say I was stopping.”

“I think I tapped out some time ago.” Wanda raised her glass of sangria. “The wine suits me better than the steak.”

“More wine,” Sharon said promptly, and moved to refill Natasha and Wanda’s glasses and then her own. 

“I might have reached my meat quota.” Natasha sighed and leaned back in her seat, then picked up her wineglass and smiled. “My wine quota, on the other hand…”

“See?” Steve grinned at her and speared another forkful of skirt steak. “This is why I went light on the beer. More room for the sliced cow.”

“Moo, moo,” Wanda murmured over her glass.

Sharon glanced at her. “Are you drunk already?”

Wanda smiled. “I just might be.”

Bucky said nothing to any of that. He didn’t need to speak when there was still so much meat to be eaten.

“One more of those sausages,” Sam said wearily. “Just one more, and then I tap out for real.”

“This is what happens when you don’t pace yourself.” Sharon smiled and gave Sam’s shoulder a squeeze before cutting another slice of her pork. “Alternate between meat and wine. Emphasis on the wine.”

“Not for me,” Steve said, grinning broadly. “I’ll alternate between the meat and the other meat, thank you very much.”

“With a side of meat?” Natasha raised an eyebrow at Steve, the corners of her mouth twitching in that tiny smile of hers.

“And some meat to wash it down with.” Steve chuckled back at her. “Skip the dessert, just keep bringing me more meat.”

“Dessert meat.” Bucky shoved more steak into his mouth. Not dessert steak though. Just regular steak.

“A meat chaser.” Steve looked over at Bucky and chuckled again. “How about it, Buck? You want some dessert meat with a meat chaser?”

Bucky shrugged. “I could do dessert meat and a meat chaser.”

“Easily.” Natasha shook her head. “I’m definitely sleeping in my own bed tonight, away from you boys.”

Sharon raised both eyebrows and looked at Natasha over the rim of her wineglass. 

Natasha smirked. “Oh, did I say that out loud?”

“Uh… yeah.” Sam’s fork hung in the air, halfway to his mouth. “Yeah, you did.”

“This sounds like something we should know about.” Wanda took another sip of wine and smiled at Natasha. “In detail.”

Steve’s face went slightly red, but he tried to cover it by shoveling more sirloin into his mouth.

Natasha’s smirk broadened and she shifted to look at Steve. “Why don’t you ask Rogers here? He of the very loose lips.”

Bucky nearly choked on his sirloin, but he couldn’t help but smirk as well.

“Um… yeah.” Steve definitely went red at that, but he’d run out of food to hide behind. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “Yeah, the three of us are sort of an item now. Recently. Since a little more than a week ago, when we were still in the Tower while my place was getting fixed up.” He gave Natasha a playful sort of scowl, then raised a challenging eyebrow at Bucky. “And I don’t recall either of you complaining about my loose lips then.”

“We made out in my hospital bed,” Bucky said suddenly, before he could over-think his words. 

Wanda leaned forward, wineglass in hand. “All three of you?”

Bucky shook his head. “Me and Steve.”

Sharon frowned and looked at Sam. “We didn’t make out in my hospital bed.”

“No, but I did bring you not just two, but _four_ ChemLights.” Sam grinned. “In Jedi colors, no less.”

“Okay,” Sharon conceded. “Fair enough.”

“Yeah.” Steve cleared his throat again and went on. “So guess who saw us making out in Bucky’s hospital bed.”

“That would be me.” Natasha raised her wineglass and smiled, a bit more broadly than usual. “Hottest thing I’d ever seen.” She raised an eyebrow at Steve and Bucky. “Up till that point, anyway.”

“So what brought you to making out in bed?” Wanda swirled the wine around in her glass. “And that wasn’t the first time, right? I thought maybe you would have done that the night of your birthday party.”

“No,” Steve sighed. “In retrospect, though, it probably would have been a good idea.” He chuckled. “Less lost time to be made up for. But yeah, that was the first time.”

“Except for those times we almost kissed,” Bucky added, and Sharon looked back and forth between the two of them and smiled.

“Well, yeah, but we didn’t actually do anything those times, did we?” Steve raised an eyebrow at Bucky and smiled. “We should have, but we didn’t. That’s just me being me, I guess.”

“Well,” Sam said, exchanging a glance with Sharon. “It’s not like we didn’t see this coming.”

“Right, and before you tell us that you thought you were being subtle,” Sharon held up a hand at Steve, “let me just remind you that there is exactly nothing subtle about you.”

“Nope,” Natasha added.

A smile danced across Bucky’s lips. “No chill.”

“No perception either, I guess.” Steve chuckled again, shaking his head. “If everybody else saw this coming and I didn’t.”

“Nope,” Natasha said again, smiling into her sangria. “No subtlety, no chill, no perception. But a metric ton of honesty and earnestness, and that counts for plenty.”

Bucky was suddenly very tempted to add ‘along with a big dick.’ He didn’t, but it was a very near thing, and he covered himself by shoving a hunk of meat into his mouth and chasing it down with a swig of beer.

Didn’t make it any less true though.

He smiled to himself.

Things weren’t going too badly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the First: If you have never experienced the wonders of _churrascaria_ at a Braziliain _rodizio_ , YOU ARE MISSING OUT. Stop reading and go eat. Well, finish reading my notes first and THEN go eat. But go. 
> 
> Note the Second: We'll be dropping down to a once a week updating schedule (Thursdays) for the next few weeks as I work on my Captain America: Reverse Big Bang prompts. It's better than going on a total hiatus, and the end result will be two delicious Stucky fics, along with the steady continuation of this story. It's a win/win for all.
> 
> FEED THE AUTHOR! NOM NOM NOM!


	31. Pancaked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky placed a few bacon strips onto a pancake, rolled it up, and took a bite. “You going to cover me in syrup and make your own food porn? Could get messy.”_
> 
> _Steve actually considered it for a long moment, but ultimately decided that the cleanup wouldn’t be worth it._
> 
> _“No,” he said after a while, a look of regret on his face. “Maybe with something easier to clean up than syrup, though.”_

**Manhattan**  
**the following day**

“So after the silicone Pac-Man oven mitts from a few weeks ago, he bought a frozen fruit soft-serve machine.” Sharon leaned back against the damp wall and inhaled the lavender-scented steam. “We’ve been having smoothies for breakfast every day for two weeks.”

“I should get one for Rogers.” Natasha ran a hand through her steam-damp hair. “He only knows how to make one kind of breakfast, and it’s not smoothies.”

When they left the steakhouse last night, Sharon had made Natasha promise to set aside some time the following day to sit and talk about things, and she’d agreed. Not that enough hadn’t been said already for Sharon to have likely gotten a pretty clear idea of how things were, but there were things a woman could tell her best girlfriend that she couldn’t tell anyone else.

And besides, having the conversation in the steam room of a spa? Extra bonus.

“I know exactly what kind of breakfast he makes.” Sharon adjusted her towel slightly. “And unless he’s changed his tune - which I doubt he has - then he’s been feeding you pancakes, eggs, and pork products.”

“Same tune.” Natasha smirked. “Frozen Eggo’s instead of pancakes, but everything else is spot-on.”

Sharon rolled her eyes. “Buy the man a waffle iron, for the love of god.”

Natasha cocked an eyebrow at her. “Why didn’t you?” She snorted. “The two of you were an item for long enough. Or didn’t you get tired of the same old breakfast every day?”

“You call a year a long time?” Sharon snorted, though it was without heat. “Well, it was definitely long enough, it was certainly on-and-off enough, and we never lived together, so I didn’t get pancaked at enough.”

“Well, I’m likely to get pancaked at every day if I go along with his suggestion.” Natasha sat back and sighed, retucking her towel as she did and half wishing she hadn’t bothered with it at all. “He wants me to move in.”

Sharon raised an eyebrow. “Wow.” 

“I know.” Natasha sighed again. “I tried to tell him to take it easy, but he’s…” She snorted. “You know how he is. So I spent last night at my own place.”

She’d ridden home from the steakhouse last night on James’ back, her head drooping over his shoulder and her arms lazily around his neck. She’d indulged a bit heavily in the sangria, especially after the conversation had turned to her newfound relationship.

“Not that I could have made it there on my own,” she added, smiling wryly. 

“Oh yeah, watching Barnes carry you and your shoes out the door was hilarious.” Sharon smiled. “I’m surprised he didn’t stay the night.”

“He’d have been disappointed if he did.” The wry smile turned up a few degrees. “Nothing sexy would’ve happened. We all ate too much, and I certainly drank too much. I barely even remember getting into bed. In fact, it’s entirely possible that he just deposited me in bed.”

“I hear you,” Sharon said. “We got home last night and fell right into bed. Sam muttered something that sounded like ‘good night, babe,’ but might have just been manly grunting, and then we were out.”

“Sounds like things between you two are working out pretty nicely.” Natasha smiled and combed her fingers through her hair again. The steam was making it curl much more than it usually did. “You deserve a good cook who communicates in manly grunts.”

Sharon grinned. “Right?” After a moment, she added, “But you and Steve and Barnes? Or Bucky? James? What do you want me to call him, even?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who calls him James.” Natasha’s smile softened. “I sort of like it that way.”

“All right. Bucky it is. Still.” Sharon looked at her. “All three of you? How?”

“How?” Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Are you asking for descriptive positions?”

“Why?” Sharon smirked. “You offering?”

“That was one time.” Natasha shook her head, smirking. “One time, and we were drunk.”

Sharon snorted. “Says you.” A beat. “Anyway, seriously. How did it happen? I know you and Bucky happened. The night of Steve’s birthday party, it seemed pretty obvious that Steve, at least, wanted to get into Bucky’s pants. But the three of you?”

“Well, that was my idea.” Natasha closed her eyes and smiled, replaying it in her head. “After I saw the two of them going at it, I knew I couldn’t just let it go on. They’d have wound up screwing each other senseless and then feeling like they betrayed me, and they’d have both felt too guilty about it for any of our relationships to survive, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

“Screwing each other senseless?” Sharon echoed, a smile drifting across her face. “Well, I don’t know Bucky all that well, but that’s pretty much Steve’s M.O.”

“You’re telling me.” Natasha looked over at her. “Turns out you weren’t lying about his libido.” Another smile played over her face. “But it makes him fun to watch.”

“So you caught them making out in bed.” Sharon shook her head, the smile lingering on her lips. “And now the three of you want to give it a go? Not just sex, but an actual relationship?”

Natasha had thought of it before. How difficult it had the potential to be, how high the chances were (statistically speaking, anyway) that it wouldn’t work out. The usual bits of ridicule had occurred to her - _the Sixties are over, people; they tried it, it didn’t work._ And yet…

She smiled to think of how well James and Rogers fit together. How deep their friendship was, and how easily it had transitioned from platonic to very-definitely-not. So easily, in fact, that they wouldn’t have been aware of it if she hadn’t stepped in. Her own relationship with James was so well-established, so deeply ingrained in both of them, that not even Lukin’s barbaric scouring of James’ mind had been able to keep them apart forever. And the more she thought about it, the more the idea of getting closer to Rogers - Steve - appealed to her. She’d taken a pretty instant liking to him as a friend, and the events of the past year had brought them so much closer together. 

“Yeah,” she said with a smile. “An actual relationship.” She shifted, having to retuck her towel as it threatened to come loose. “I really think it can work. All the elements are there.”

“Well, I hope it does.” Sharon dragged her fingers through her hair. “I really hope it does, because I want to see you happy. It’s about time, and you deserve it.”

“I’d say we all do.” Natasha leaned her head back against the tile, breathing in the scented steam. Smiling at how well things were working out, and at how happy the three of them had the potential to be. How happy all of them had the potential to be, in fact.

“You as well.” A sidelong glance at Sharon with a miniscule smirk. “Finally landed a gourmand, after all.”

Sharon hummed in contented approval. “He is quite the gourmand.”

They sat there for a few long moments, each lost in thought and smiling in blissful relaxation. Until finally, Natasha held up her hand and frowned at what she saw.

“Ugh, I’m turning into a prune.” She wiped a slick of steam and sweat from her forehead and looked over at Sharon. “Come on. Let’s grab a quick shower and see about lunch.”  
\---

“We’re probably going to have to get up sooner or later,” Steve mumbled into Bucky’s shoulder. “Just saying.”

He’d come to about fifteen minutes earlier, his eyes falling on the familiar sight of his own room in his own apartment. An immediate smile had spread across his face - a groggy, sleep-dulled smile, but a very happy one. They were back home, the both of them.

Bucky was splayed out next to him - mostly on top of him, really - and he hadn’t even needed to think about it. His arms had just looped around Bucky by themselves, and he’d hugged Bucky to him in a tight embrace. He’d breathed in the scent of Bucky’s hair, felt the slight prickle of not-yet-shaven skin against his face, and smiled and kissed Bucky on the neck and cheek until he’d woken up.

Which he did, with a scowl that melted into a smile when he realized exactly what was going on.

“Why do we have to get up?” Bucky didn’t move. “I don’t have therapy today. You don’t have to work until later.”

“Well, for one thing,” Steve said, shifting slightly and brushing the hair back off of Bucky’s forehead, “you’re going to want breakfast soon.”

Bucky snorted and didn’t bother lifting his head. “You know nothing.”

“I know your appetite.” Steve chuckled, his hand coming to rest on Bucky’s metal shoulder. It was surprising how comfortable he’d gotten with Bucky’s mechanical appendage, given how freaked-out he’d been by it initially. But now, it just felt like another part of Bucky. “And I know that if I got up now and started cooking, you’d be in the kitchen after me five minutes later.”

“I like this though.” Bucky trailed his fingers lazily down Steve’s arm. “Just being here like this. It’s nice.”

“I know.” Steve took a deep breath and let it out in a contented sigh. He looked down at Bucky, smiling at his touch. “This is the kind of thing that makes it all worthwhile.”

“It?” Bucky raised his head slightly. “Makes what all worthwhile?”

“Everything.” Steve hugged Bucky tighter. “All the hard work, all the frustration, the pain. The long hours and the long flights, the training and the fighting and the way the work’s never really done.” Another deep breath and cleansing sigh. “But this? Being able to have a morning like this, even if it’s only once in a while? It makes all of that seem worth it.”

Bucky said nothing to that, but he shifted slightly so that his head rested more comfortably on Steve’s shoulder and his hand was on Steve’s waist. His fingertips slid just under the hem of Steve’s t-shirt. 

And Steve, as he closed his eyes and smiled at the light touch of Bucky’s fingertips on the bare flesh of his abdomen, found himself suddenly thinking that this was the first time the two of them had woken up together since the three-way relationship had begun. The first time since the two of them had taken that last step from friendship to romance that it had been just the pair of them. 

And as much as Steve liked Natasha both as a good friend and now a romantic partner, as honest as he’d been when he’d said he wanted her to move in and think of the place as her home too, he found himself happy to have this little bit of time to spend alone with Bucky.

“Is it worth it to you?” He turned his head, eyes still closed, and rested his lips against Bucky’s forehead. 

“The long hours and the long flights and the training and the fighting?” Bucky trailed his fingers lightly up Steve’s torso. “I don’t have much else to compare it to, do I? But this…” He pressed his warm palm flat against Steve’s chest, and Steve knew he’d be able to feel his heart beating steadily. “I like this. Right here with you. I like this.”

“You’re comfortable here?” 

Steve knew he didn’t have to ask, but he wanted to hear it anyway. Wanted to hear Bucky tell him that his home was there with Steve. Wanted to be reminded, reassured after such a long time and so much hardship and struggle that Bucky was there to stay. 

He resettled his arms around Bucky, hugging him close, and lifted one hand to drag his fingertips lazily up Bucky’s back and down again. The layered muscle was familiar beneath his touch, and yet there was still a thrilling hint of discovery there as well.

“With me?”

Bucky shivered against him, arching his back slightly into Steve’s touch. “I think I’ve told you more than once.” His hand still lay flat against Steve’s chest. “The only reason I’ve been following all these damn rules all this time is so that I can stay here.” He licked his lips. Shifted slightly to look Steve in the eyes. “With you.”

There weren’t any words to describe the feeling that leapt to Steve’s heart on hearing Bucky say that. None that Steve knew, anyway; none that could do the feeling justice. But he felt his heart swell in his chest, like there was a mountain growing in it and there simply wasn’t enough room to contain its spread. 

“I want you to stay here with me, Buck.” His voice came out as a whisper, and he knew he’d gone a bit misty in the eyes. But it didn’t matter. “It’s really all I ever wanted. To have you back, to have you home.”

He stretched his head forward, bringing his lips to Bucky’s in a forceful kiss. A possessive kiss; one that was meant to give him a real and tangible reminder that Bucky was there, and that things between them had… evolved. That their friendship had undergone a transformation - a metamorphosis - becoming so much more than it ever had been before.

“I love you,” he found himself murmuring into Bucky’s mouth as they kissed. “God, Bucky, I love you so much.”

“I like that we can do this,” Bucky said breathlessly between kisses. “And we have nothing else we have to do for the rest of the morning.” He pressed his lips against Steve’s for a long moment, but then pulled back and smirked at him. “Except eat breakfast. That has to happen, too.”

Steve snorted out a laugh, grinning with happiness as he gave Bucky’s face a gentle, playful shove. “See? I told you I knew your appetite. Is there ever a time when you’re not hungry?”

“Yeah.” Bucky’s smirk deepened and his eyes practically glittered. “When your dick’s in my mouth.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed, though the smile in them didn’t waver in the slightest. He tried to put on a disapproving scowl, but he succeeded only in twisting his mouth into what was probably an amusing shape. In truth, he was having a hard time keeping himself from laughing.

“You’re such a jerk,” he said with a shake of his head.

Bucky continued as if he hadn’t even heard him. “But then again, maybe I’m thinking about sausage at those times.”

This time Steve really did laugh. Even if he punctuated it by knocking his forehead against Bucky’s. “Jesus, Buck. I thought I was the one with the filthy mind.”

Bucky rolled over suddenly, so that he was on top of Steve, legs straddling his waist. “Well, we’ve never gotten to do this before.” He nipped at Steve’s lower lip. “Have we?”

“Nope.” Steve kissed him back, his arms going around Bucky’s waist. “And I couldn’t be happier that we’re getting to do it now.” He smiled, a bit deviously. “Well… maybe just a bit happier.”

He rolled over as suddenly as Bucky had, flipping them over again so that he was on top, between Bucky’s legs. “There.” His devious smile turned lascivious. “Much better.”

It was easy to lose himself in the simple pleasure of just lying there in bed and enjoying the new things he and Bucky could do with each other. Things he’d never considered doing when they were younger - which he kicked himself for never considering - but that seemed to bring the two of them even closer than they’d ever been. 

Sure, it was easy to get lost in what he and Bucky were doing. But his stomach had other ideas, and he knew that if he was hungry, Bucky would be ravenous.

“Got an idea,” he said with a grin, pulling away from the kiss and slipping out of bed. “Wait right there. I’ll be back.”

Fifteen minutes later, he brought a very full tray into the bedroom and set it down on the nightstand. “Here you go, Buck.” He beamed. “Breakfast in bed.”

“Wow, Steve.” Bucky sat up on his elbows and smiled. A real smile - not one that flickered across his mouth and then disappeared just as quickly, but one that lingered on his face. “It’s almost like you’re trying to find ways to keep me in bed.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Steve slid back into bed, Bucky’s genuine smile warming his heart. He put his arms back around Bucky and hugged him, holding him close and just luxuriating in his presence. “I was just trying to head off your appetite before you started chewing on my neck or something.”

Bucky chewed at his neck anyway.

Well, he nibbled at it, and Steve chuckled. “Aw, come on, Buck; I brought you bacon.”

“Right.” Bucky reached for the plate, fingers scrabbling over a bacon strip. “Wouldn’t want this to turn into food porn.” 

“Food porn?” Steve looked uneasily over at Bucky. “I don’t know exactly what that is, but I probably don’t want to.”

“Get with the times, Steve.” Bucky pushed himself into a sitting position and bit off half the bacon strip. “Food porn is cooking food and presenting it beautifully.” He popped the rest of the bacon into his mouth. “As an act of affection.”

“Oh.” Steve’s brow furrowed, and he reached over for a piece of bacon of his own. “Yeah, I would’ve thought it was something a lot less wholesome.” He bit into the bacon and snorted. “See? I really am the one with the filthy mind.”

Bucky placed a few bacon strips onto a pancake, rolled it up, and took a bite. “You going to cover me in syrup and make your own food porn? Could get messy.”

Steve actually considered it for a long moment, but ultimately decided that the cleanup wouldn’t be worth it. 

“No,” he said after a while, a look of regret on his face. “Maybe with something easier to clean up than syrup, though.”

Bucky chewed on his pancake roll-up. “But you were seriously thinking about it.”

“I was.” Steve nodded and crunched on another piece of bacon, his face perfectly straight. “I’m not going to deny it.”

Bucky studied the remains of his roll-up for a moment, a small smile on his lips. “I can’t believe we’re actually having this conversation. It’s…” He shrugged. “It’s nice.”

“Yeah.” Steve smiled and settled back in bed, his back against the headboard. “It is.”

It was nice in a way he knew would only happen every so often. With their schedules as busy as they were, their hours odd and long and absolutely unpredictable, they’d only be able to enjoy mornings like these once every couple of weeks at best. And yet, the fact that this kind of morning was even possible was a miracle. 

Bucky hesitated for a long moment. Long enough that Steve was about to ask him what was on his mind, when he suddenly blurted out: “I hope we can keep doing this.”

“Why wouldn’t we?” Steve’s brow furrowed. “Are you worried about something I should know about?”

“No.” Another shrug. “I don’t know.” He stuffed the remains of the pancake roll-up into his mouth. “Things happen.”

“I’m not going to let those things happen,” Steve responded automatically. He put a protective arm around Bucky’s shoulders and squeezed. “You know I’d never just stand by and let anything bad happen to you, Buck. That’s what I promised you back in the beginning, and now?” He shook his head. “Now that we’ve made it this far, now that we’re together like we are now? I’d die before I let anything happen to take that away.”

Bucky frowned. “Yeah. You always say that.”

“I always mean it.” Steve squeezed tighter. “You ought to know that by now.”

Another stretch of silence lingered between them.

“I’m not…” Bucky stared at his hands. “I’m not used to… I don’t know. These things. But it’s nice. You. Natasha. Breakfast in bed.” He reached for another strip of bacon. “It’s all nice.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Steve smiled and leaned his head against Bucky’s. “It really is nice. And hey, I’m not used to it either. Especially the part where there’s the three of us all in a relationship together.” He chuckled. “Still working my way through that. But I’m happy we’ve all got the chance to figure it out together.”

Bucky said nothing, but he leaned into Steve and exhaled slowly, his body relaxing against him.

“I love you, Buck.” Steve turned his head, bringing his lips to the side of Bucky’s head, and kissed him. “And I think the best part of everything that’s happened so far is what’s happened with you and me.”

A smile drifted across Bucky’s face. Quickly he finished off the bacon strip and turned to Steve. “Well then.” His lips just touched Steve’s. “We should probably make good use of our time, shouldn’t we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST: I hope you've enjoyed the past few chapters of domestic fluff and food. I'm not at all lulling you into a sense of warm security before more plot kicks in. LOOK, BUCKY AND STEVE EATING PANCAKES!
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND: For those of you looking forward to more Stucky fics, my Reverse Big Bang stuff is well underway. For those of you who like a little angst with your shipping, welp, there's a lot o' dat.
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD: FEED THE AUTHOR. NOM NOM NOM!


	32. Psychic Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We’ll find a way.” He squeezed Bucky’s shoulder again. “I’ll help you. We’ll steal a snowmobile or something. Find a tent. Weapons. Something.”_
> 
> _He could hear the desperate pleading in his voice. Knew he was grasping at straws. But he couldn’t leave Bucky here._
> 
> _“You’ve been here, too?” Natasha was beside them suddenly, standing on the other side of Bucky and looking out at the snowdrifts._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Russian characters are all speaking to each other, assume they're speaking Russian. No ["language brackets"] needed.

**somewhere**  
**a week later - late July**

They’d dropped into absolute chaos.

Bullets zipped past them, knocking chunks out of the gritty walls of sand-colored stone. Smoke filled the air, and right in front of them, the Winter Soldier shoved an old man with a shining bald scalp behind him. He backed away from the gunfire, raising his metal arm to protect his head, and pulled out a pistol from a holster strapped to his thigh.

There were six men coming at him. Every one of the six fell to the ground with a hole in his head. And once the chaos had died down, the old man finally ventured out from behind the Soldier. A herd of soldiers in Soviet uniforms poured into the room, and once the area was deemed secured, the Soldier slipped away.

Kabul in 1983 was hell.

The Soldier had been in and out of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan for the past five years on various missions - the assassination of one president, and then two others in quick succession. The assassination of an American ambassador, and various rebel leaders, and others whose names and faces began to run together. 

Usually dates also ran together, but the Soldier hadn’t been allowed rest in a long time. He was needed too badly, Comrade General Karpov had explained. He was needed too badly, and at a moment’s notice.

He was so tired.

The war seemed never ending.

Hadn’t there been another like it? A long time ago?

“But how could that be, Soldier?” The doctor looked up from his notepad, his face set in a frown. “The last war ended nearly forty years ago. You aren’t nearly old enough to have been in it.”

“But…” 

The Soldier frowned. 

He was so fucking _tired._ He wanted a cigarette. Except he didn’t smoke. 

Did he?

He had cigarettes in his K-rations, but-

No.

Where had that come from?

He pushed a hand through his short hair, which felt grimy with sweat and dirt. He would need to shower before he presented himself to Comrade General Karpov. 

The doctor was looking at him.

The Soldier scowled. “What?”

“You went away in your head for a minute.” The doctor frowned. “You’ve gone for a very long time without rest, Soldier. Too long.”

The doctor wasn’t wrong, and yet-

“I’m needed here,” the Soldier replied without hesitation. “I know I’m needed here. Especially now.”

“You’ll do no good for Comrade General Karpov if you’re unable to function properly when he needs you the most.” The doctor spoke softly, as he generally tended to, but there was finality in his eyes. “You know what happens to you if you go too long without rest, Soldier. Your mind starts to play tricks on you more and more frequently.”

The Soldier was silent. 

The doctor sighed. “You’ll need reconditioning.”

His eyes snapped back to the doctor’s at that. “The mind tricks haven’t been that bad,” he said carefully. Slowly. “I’m just tired.”

“I know.” The doctor sighed again, shaking his head. “If it were up to me, you’d have been resting much more regularly. But Comrade General Karpov wants you awake and alert, and that means that if you’re having even the smallest problem with mind tricks, we have to deal with it. If we don’t…” The doctor spread his hands. “You may falter at the most critical moment, and the worst may happen.” He eyed the Soldier closely. “You don’t want that, do you?”

The doctor was right, but that didn’t mean the Soldier had to like it.

“No,” he finally said. “No, I don’t want that.”

“Well then.” The doctor gestured toward the chair. “Let’s begin. The sooner we finish, the sooner you can return to working at full capacity. And the mind tricks won’t bother you.”

No getting out of it. 

The Soldier sighed.

Some time later - maybe a few hours? a few days? He was never certain of how much time had passed after a conditioning - he stood in Comrade General Karpov’s office in the Soviet Embassy.

Their Soviet Embassy. The embassy of their Motherland.

That much was correct. He knew that much.

“You look well, Soldier.” The old man’s weathered face looked older and more worn every time the Soldier saw it, but his eyes never seemed to lose their shine. “You saved my life today. You know that, don’t you?”

The Soldier didn’t know how to reply to that. Of course he had saved the old man’s life. Always. Without hesitation.

But to reply to that?

“And what happened today won’t be the last of it either.” The old man’s wrinkled face creased into a deep frown. “Other attempts on my life will be made. More will come. And when they do, I will need you by my side.” 

This was new.

“Sir?”

The old man lowered himself laboriously into his chair, exhaling loudly with the effort. “As of now, Soldier, I am removing you from active field duty. Your new assignment, for as long as it remains necessary, is to stay by my side at all times as my personal bodyguard.”

“Of course, sir,” the Soldier said immediately, though a different thought nagged at the back of his mind. 

He hesitated. Said it anyway.

“Though it wouldn’t be necessary if you’d retire back to Moscow, sir.”

The old man was eighty-three years old, after all. He had long since earned his retirement. 

“I thought you would say something like that, Soldier.” The old man’s frown became a small smile for the barest instant, then returned to a frown. “But I cannot. Not now, not yet. Not until we’ve won this war. Not until the Afghans, and the Americans who arm and train and supply them, have learned that they cannot oppose us.”

The Soldier’s expression darkened at that. The Americans were both arrogant and imperialistic, and it would likely take a very long time before they learned anything. 

But he had his orders, and he straightened and looked at the old man.

“Yes, sir. As you say.”

\---

Steve found himself clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw began to hurt. In this place, Bucky’s thoughts were as clear to him as if they’d been playing over a loudspeaker, and hearing him call Karpov ‘the old man’ with such affection made his blood boil. 

As old and obviously infirm as Karpov was - at this point, he was probably well into the terminal stage of the disease that would finally kill him - Steve couldn’t fight down the impulse to fasten his hands around his leathery neck and choke the life from him. 

Because whatever else Karpov might have been, he was also irredeemably evil. He’d deliberately poisoned Bucky’s mind against America because of his personal hatred for Steve. He’d stolen Bucky’s memories, torn away any connection Bucky’d had with his old life, his home, and his family. He’d brainwashed him into committing horrible crimes and murdering scores of people. And still - still! - Bucky seemed to look at him like a father figure.

“I hate him,” Steve spat bitterly, not caring who might hear or how they might respond. “Damn him to hell.”

“He’s dead, Steve,” Bucky said quietly. “He’s been dead for a long time, I think.”

“Yeah.” Steve couldn’t let go of the bitterness. “Since before I could get to him and make him pay for what he did to you.”

“He’ll still be just as dead no matter how much energy you put into hating him.” Natasha’s voice lacked its usual sarcastic edge. “And you’ve got much better things to do than waste your time and effort on a dead man.”

She was right, of course. She generally was, at least when it came to practical matters. And she had a way of phrasing things that had the power to knock him off whatever track he’d been on in his mind and force him to think about things in a different way.

He was lucky to have her around. They both were.

“Fair enough,” Steve replied, a clipped and sour note still in his voice. “But the damage he did is still there. And if what we read in the file is anything to judge by, we haven’t seen anywhere near the worst of it yet.”

Bucky was silent.

“Well, there’s still a bit more to see here, and then we’ll continue working backwards,” Jean broke in gently. “It’s the safest way to do it.” She looked at Bucky. “Shall we continue?”

Bucky nodded.

\---

As the scenes flashed by, a chaotic montage of gunfire and explosions and dust and disarray, the Soldier began visibly fraying. 

The Soviet Embassy was shelled over a three day period, forcing the Soldier to escort Karpov to the relative safety of Tajbeg Palace on the outskirts of Kabul. An uprising outside of the palace had resulted in a bloody massacre. Intruders had broken into the palace one night, and the Soldier had violently dispatched them, one after the other, until a dozen bodies lay scattered across blood-streaked marble floors. 

And so it went, on and on and on.

Strange images - mind tricks - began to interfere with the Soldier’s waking hours. Forests and rolling hills that seemed to belong to countries far away, maybe in Europe. Factories infiltrated and destroyed in the dead of the night. Comrades - soldiers in an array of mismatched uniforms - who traded in cigarettes and cheap booze and dirty jokes, but none of them were Russian. 

He had done this before. Somewhere, he had done this before.

“This has happened before.” He said the words aloud to the old man one day, even though the old man’s health continued to deteriorate day by day. “Hasn’t it?”

“Countless times since the beginning of the Soviet Union.” There was something shrewd in the old man’s eyes as he looked at the Soldier. Something dark in the corners of his voice. “But not to you.”

The Soldier thought he could remember unpronounceable French cities on maps (but he spoke French) and shitty rations that at least included cigarettes and a few sticks of gum (but he had never formally served in the military) and spending leave in pubs that served warm beer (why would he have been in England?).

No, that had to be wrong.

He could taste the warm beer. He could feel the kick of nicotine. (He rarely drank. He never smoked.)

“I don’t know.” The Soldier just barely resisted squeezing his eyes shut. His commanding officer needed him. “There was a war. Another war. Not this one.”

“Which one?” The old man shifted in his chair. “None you’d have been old enough to see.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen plenty. I’ve had eighty years to see it all. But you? How long have you had?”

“I don’t know.” 

He had to maintain discipline. No matter what, he had to maintain discipline before his commanding officer.

“Sir,” he corrected. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Not nearly long enough to have been there during the last great war.” The old man’s eyes narrowed. If he’d been bothered by the missing honorific, he didn’t show it. “I was a young man then. You wouldn’t even have been born.”

That had to be wrong.

The old man was never wrong.

“When, then?” The Soldier felt his mind unspooling, felt his grasp on the present begin to unravel, and he was helpless to stop it.

The doctor. Where was the doctor?

“When have I seen this before?” He swallowed loudly. “When?”

“Have a seat, Soldier.” The old man’s eyes flickered with concern and - was it suspicion? - and he gestured towards the empty chair on the other side of his desk. “And while you’re at it, have a drink.”

The Soldier hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he sat down and helped himself to a cup of tea from the samovar on the old man’s desk. 

Maybe it would wash the taste of warm beer and cigarettes from his mouth. 

“You’ve been working awfully hard lately, with no rest.” The old man sighed, reaching for his tea. “I can only imagine how difficult it’s been for you, and I want you to know that I appreciate everything you’ve done for me these past months.”

The Soldier sipped at the tea and listened carefully.

“Believe me, Soldier, this was not the way I wanted things to go.” The old man suddenly looked very tired, and - almost frighteningly - very old. The light in his eyes seemed to flicker like the flame of a candle, and in that moment he looked older than the Soldier had ever seen him look. “I’d never have permitted you to go this long without rest. And believe me, if it wasn’t absolutely necessary for you to be here, awake and alert, I’d have had you asleep long ago.” 

He shook his head and blew the steam from his tea before taking a long sip. “But things are what they are. The Americans are making this place their proxy battleground against us, and if we permit the Afghans to drive us back, the world will see it not as their victory, but that of the Americans.” He looked up into the Soldier’s eyes again, the light in his own eyes strong once more. “Could you live with such a thing, Soldier?”

The Soldier stared into his tea for a moment. 

The rest of his concerns - confusing and distorted images that were just mind tricks, memories of things that could have never happened - paled in comparison to the very real and crucial battle before them. And the old man’s concerns were, of course, the Soldier’s concerns as well.

Always.

“No, sir.” He looked up. “No, I could not live with that.”

\---

Steve couldn’t bear to watch any more. It wasn’t even the fact that he knew Bucky’s mind was going to be freshly rearranged in the wake of that conversation that bothered him the most. It was that the conversation itself seemed so genial. Bucky had spoken to Karpov with unforced deference rather than the wary, hate-tinged trepidation he’d always shown Lukin. Karpov, the man who’d been responsible for destroying Bucky’s link with his past in the first place. And Bucky might as well have been talking to old Mr. Cicalese back in Brooklyn, for all the respect and loyalty he’d demonstrated.

It made him sick to think about it. He had to turn away.

He had to leave.

He stalked away through the corridors of the ruined palace, turning at random until he suddenly found himself in a place where the flaking walls and tottering columns gave way to smooth green tile. To a familiar hallway with an open door at the end of it, a thick metal door with a rubber gasket around the edge and a wheel where there ought to have been a handle. Beyond the door, there lay not the rolling brown hills of Afghanistan and the sprawling city of Kabul below, but an endless wasteland of white.

And just inside the door, wearing only a thin bathrobe and two-piece hospital pajamas, looking horribly lost and frightened, was Bucky.

“Bucky?” Steve reached out cautiously and put a tentative hand on Bucky’s shoulder. He’d seen this all before, in their previous memory walks. This was the only time he could physically interact with Bucky in a memory - when he saw him in this hallway, looking out at the desolate and frozen Siberian tundra. The awful bleakness of it seemed to radiate hopelessness.

“Bucky, it’s me.” He squeezed Bucky’s shoulder, desperately willing him to remember. “It’s Steve.”

“There’s no way out.” Bucky didn’t meet his gaze. Icy wind whipped the bathrobe around his legs. “No way out from here.”

Looking out at the frozen wasteland stretched out before him, the scant few trees twisted and gnarled and the snow blasted into whirling powder by the unforgiving winds, it wasn’t hard for Steve to see where a sentiment like that might have come from. The snow stretched on in all directions, as far as Steve could see. If he’d walked all day, even if he started walking at the crack of dawn, he’d never reach the end of it. And at the end of the day, when the sun went down and the tiny bit of warmth it brought vanished…

“We’ll find a way.” He squeezed Bucky’s shoulder again. “I’ll help you. We’ll steal a snowmobile or something. Find a tent. Weapons. Something.”

He could hear the desperate pleading in his voice. Knew he was grasping at straws. But he couldn’t leave Bucky here.

“You’ve been here, too?” Natasha was beside them suddenly, standing on the other side of Bucky and looking out at the snowdrifts.

“Yeah.” Steve reached out a hand, his fingertips finding Natasha’s. “When did you see this?”

“The second memory walk.” She glanced past Bucky, who didn’t even turn his head to acknowledge her, and locked eyes with Steve. “When we uncovered…” A beat, then, “Everything that happened between us.”

Steve sighed, looking from Natasha to Bucky and back again. Bucky seemed fixated on the snow, despair and fear in his eyes, and Steve couldn’t seem to banish it. “Do you know what this is? Why we can talk to him here? Touch him, even?”

“I don’t know.” Natasha frowned and studied Bucky’s face for a moment. He didn’t respond. “He doesn’t speak Russian though.”

Steve raised an eyebrow at that. He could tell from Natasha’s voice and her expression that that detail bothered her. What bothered him, though, was that Bucky didn’t seem to notice them at all except when they spoke directly to him.

“Bucky?” Steve squeezed his shoulder again. “We’re both here now. Me and Natasha. We can get you out of here.”

“There is no way out of here.” Bucky still wouldn’t meet Steve’s gaze, his eyes fixed despairingly on the endless expanse of snow. “No way to leave.”

“James is back on the beach with Ms. Grey,” Natasha said. “The real James.”

“Maybe we should get him.” Steve shook Bucky by the shoulder, finding Bucky’s detachment suddenly very disturbing. “See if he knows what this is. Or maybe Jean knows. Or…”

With those words, the tiled corridor and the whirling snow melted away, replaced by the hilly sand and warm breeze of Coney Island. And however tightly Steve gripped his shoulder, Bucky melted away as well. 

Bucky - the real Bucky, in a Henley t-shirt and baseball cap, sat on the end of the pier with Jean. They both had their legs dangling over the side and they were sharing a cardboard container of what appeared to be fried Oreos.

“I don’t really remember this,” Bucky was saying. “I don’t remember the taste of fried Oreos. But they’re good.”

“One is good.” Jean licked her fingers. “Or even half of a big one. Any more than that, and I think I’d want to vomit.” She glanced back at Steve and Natasha. “I see you found the memory block again.”

“Is that what it was?” Steve crouched down beside them, putting both hands on Bucky’s shoulders and frowning. “I could talk to him. Touch him. Why could I do that?”

“More to the point.” Natasha folded her arms. “What’s it blocking?”

Jean shook her head. “We don’t know yet. The depths of the human mind are vast and complex and often delicate, and these things take time and consideration.”

Bucky stuffed a fried Oreo into his mouth. 

“So how come he can hear me there?” Steve kept his hands on Bucky’s shoulders; it made him feel solid and grounded just to have that bit of contact. “How come I could talk to him and get an answer back? That’s different from all the other memories we’ve found so far.”

“He didn’t understand me the first time I found him there.” Natasha came forward, dropping into a crouch as well and resting a hand on the small of Bucky’s back. “He told me he didn’t speak Russian, ‘no matter what they said.’ Along with everything else about him, I’d say that gives a pretty fair indication of when that memory is from.”

Bucky stared out at the water. “When do you think it’s from?”

“If I had to take a wild guess...” Natasha let out a sigh as she sat down on the wooden planks. “I’d say it’s from the very beginning. Close to the time you were resuscitated, before any field work.”

Steve gripped Bucky’s shoulders more tightly at that. 

Jean nodded. “That might be true. Or it might be a physical, unconscious manifestation of something traumatic. Or a combination of both.” She frowned. “Or none of the above.”

Bucky said nothing.

“The point is,” Jean continued, “we have to figure it out. And the only way to figure it out is to keep going.”

“Agreed.” Steve slid his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and gave him a supportive hug. “Aren’t we?”

“I’ll defer to the expert,” Natasha said with an arched eyebrow and that slight smile of hers. “James?”

Bucky didn’t meet their gaze. “Let’s keep going.”

\---

The woman on the other side of the hotel check-in counter, all feathered blonde hair and heavy blue eyeshadow, smiled at him. “Do I hear a Brooklyn accent?” 

Her smile was almost too friendly. Maybe flirtatious. 

“Dallas is such a long way from Brooklyn.” She slid the room key across the counter. “What brings a New York boy all the way out here?”

The Soldier smiled an easy, friendly smile back at her. “Just a bit of sightseeing before I head back to New York.”

“Then you should definitely check out the Meadows Museum.” She plucked a brochure out from under the counter and passed it to him. “They call it ‘Prado on the Prairie’, because it’s the largest Spanish art gallery in the world. Outside of Spain, of course. Full of real Picassos and Goyas.”

He tucked the brochure inside his jacket and winked at her. “Then I’ll be sure to stop in.”

“And if you’re looking for a bit of company,” she continued, “I know my way around the Picassos.”

His easy smile stayed in place. “I’ll definitely keep that in mind.”

And he did. Not her offer to go to the museum - he cast that aside, along with the brochure, the moment he entered his hotel room - but her comment about his Brooklyn accent. 

Where had that come from?

The mission was completed without any difficulty, but he eluded his handlers, skipped the extraction point, and got on a bus headed for Houston. From there, he took a bus to Memphis, and then a train to Cincinnati, then to Pittsburgh.

He’d only have so much time before they caught up to him.

The headline screamed ‘SENATE TO BEGIN WATERGATE INVESTIGATION!’ but it was the date on the newspaper that grabbed his attention - March 25, 1973.

How?

He nearly snatched the paper out of the man’s hand, but managed to ask in a polite, strangled voice if he might have a look at it.

How was it already 1973?

From Pittsburgh, he took a bus to Philadelphia to Trenton to Newark.

 _“Seriously, Jersey?”_ a voice echoed from the past somewhere, but that had been another time and place, a dirty back alley in a forgotten neighborhood, the night before the whole world went to hell. 

He had an hour to kill before the bus into Manhattan, and he bought a hot dog and a Coke and a postcard for ‘Coney Island - Just Like You Remember!’ He studied the postcard on the bus ride - black and white summer crowds milling on a packed beach and boardwalk.

There had been beer on that beach once. Beer and fireworks and something else long forgotten, but precious. 

They bagged him in a flophouse in Greenwich Village, one of the agents muttering, “Just don’t make a scene,” in Russian, and they must have drugged him, because he slipped away…

He woke up crumpled in bed, his head fuzzy and his mouth dry, and the old man was waiting for him. 

“I want you to explain yourself, Soldier.” The old man’s voice boiled with anger - uncharacteristic anger - and his eyes flashed from under knit brows. “Explain why I had to pull half a dozen operatives from deep cover to find you, when you ought to have reported in three weeks ago.”

The Soldier pulled himself into a sitting position - he would have stood, but he didn’t trust himself to do so yet - and was suddenly very conscious of the corduroy jacket and Rolling Stones t-shirt and jeans that he was wearing. Clothing appropriate for a cover identity, but never something he would have dared wear in front of the old man for a debriefing.

“I…” He licked his lips. They were very dry. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t…” The old man’s eyes widened in disbelieving anger, then narrowed again as real rage set in. “Do you expect me to believe that you deliberately avoided the extraction point, took great pains to elude the search teams I sent out after you, and traveled all the way from Texas to New York for a reason that never took shape in your head?” 

He shook his head angrily, the harsh lights from the ceiling glaring off of his smooth scalp. “You answer me right now, Soldier. I want an explanation. I want a reason why you chose to do this, and I want it now.”

The Soldier couldn’t tell the old man about the postcard in his jacket pocket. Either they had already found it, and so they knew, or they hadn’t gone through his pockets yet, in which case he didn’t want to draw attention to it.

“I…” He considered his words carefully. “I had planned to come back. It wasn’t forever.”

That much was true.

“Oh?” The Soldier’s words seemed only to infuriate the old man further. “And how long were you going to wait before coming back?” He gestured angrily with his hands. “How long were you planning on living in that filthy rat trap my agents finally discovered you in? How long were you going to lead us on a mad hunt for you, hm? Two months? Six? A year?”

He had no answer for that, and so he said nothing.

“And what were you _planning_ on telling me when you finally did come back?” The old man’s anger had turned accusatory. “That you’d decided to take an unscheduled holiday tour through America? See the capitalists in their own element? Watch them wallow in their decadence like pigs in mud?” His eyes narrowed as he glared at the Soldier’s clothing. “Or were you _planning_ on simply staying there? Becoming one of them? You certainly look like one right now.”

The Soldier liked the jacket. He liked the t-shirt. They were different than the olive green fatigues he wore whenever he wasn’t engaged in the field. And they were comfortable.

He didn’t dare say any of that. He didn’t even let his eyes drop down to his shameful clothing.

“Take them off.” The old man’s glare was sharp. “Seeing you dressed like that would be bad enough if nothing had gone wrong, but as it is?” He shook his head. “Get rid of them right now.”

An order was an order, and the Soldier didn’t hesitate. Quickly he got up off the bed, unbuckled his belt, and skinned down his jeans. The jacket and t-shirt came off a moment later, and for good measure, so did his socks. He stood there in his shorts and nothing else. 

“Now.” The old man folded his arms and fixed the Soldier with an icy glare. “I will ask you one more time, Soldier. Why did you do it?”

The Soldier pushed a hand through his filthy hair. There was no safe answer he could give. No answer that would satisfy.

There were root beer barrels in his jacket pocket, bought from a little pharmacy in Greenwich Village. Something about the candy had called to him, and he had eaten through half a bag and wondered why they tasted like home.

Such a distinctly American candy.

And the postcard - ‘Coney Island - Just Like You Remember!’ What did it mean? Why had that called to him so strongly? 

Why did a stranger in Dallas ask him if he was from Brooklyn? 

What wasn’t the old man telling him?

“I have no answer for you, sir,” he finally said.

“Fine.” The old man’s voice went flat and sour, and his eyes turned cold. “We’ll see what the doctor can do with you, then.” He gestured at the door. “Go to the laboratory. Now.”

The Soldier didn’t bother asking if he could get dressed first. And it wouldn’t have been the first time he sat in Dr. Pushkin’s laboratory in his shorts.

Only Dr. Pushkin wasn’t there at all. A different man - diminutive, with messy dark hair - sat on the stool where the doctor was usually perched. He wasn’t a technician though, as he wore a white doctor’s coat. 

He narrowed his eyes. “Where’s Dr. Pushkin?”

“Comrade Doctor Pushkin is unfortunately dead.” The man stood up from the stool and took a step in the Soldier’s direction. “He died very unexpectedly in his sleep, about a week after you -” The man cleared his throat and looked somewhat uncomfortable. “That is, about three weeks ago.”

“Died?” Behind the Soldier, General Karpov came into the room. “From what?”

“A heart attack.” The man’s eyes flickered over to General Karpov, then back to the Soldier. “A very massive and unexpected heart attack. I doubt that even Comrade Doctor Pushkin knew he was ill. None of the rest of us did, certainly.”

“Comrade Doctor Rodchenko will be stepping into Dr. Pushkin’s former role,” the old man explained. “Effective immediately.”

The Soldier glared at _Comrade_ Doctor Rodchenko with renewed scrutiny. He was taking Dr. Pushkin’s place? A skittish little man who barely looked older than twenty-five?

He turned and looked at the old man. “Sir…?”

“In fact,” the old man cut in, holding up his hand to stop the Soldier from continuing, “this is the perfect time for you to demonstrate the effectiveness of that project of yours. The one that so impressed Dr. Pushkin.”

The Soldier turned back to Dr. Rodchenko in time to see the man’s eyes light up.

“Ah yes, of course.” The doctor gestured toward the recalibration chair. “Sit down, Soldier, if you would.”

It was framed as a request, and if the old man hadn’t been in the room, the Soldier might have challenged the doctor on it. Instead he sat down with a silent glare. 

The doctor began snapping on the restraints one by one, and the Soldier couldn’t resist the question:

“Do you know what the hell you’re doing?”

“Yes, of course.” The doctor seemed offended. “Comrade Doctor Pushkin hand-selected me as his apprentice. I’ve been assisting him for some time now, and I’ve watched him very closely at work. I know what to do.”

“Theoretically,” the Soldier said sourly.

The doctor clicked the final restraint into place with a sour look of his own, then hurried over to his table. In a moment, he was back with a syringe, an alcohol swab, and a small bottle of clear liquid. He prepared an injection from the small bottle, briefly swabbed the crook of the Soldier’s right arm, and slid the needle home.

Whatever it was, it _burned_ as if his veins were on fire.

“What…” He gritted his teeth. His breath hitched in his throat. “What is it?”

“A truth serum of my own invention.” The doctor felt at the Soldier’s wrist for a pulse, checking it against his wristwatch. “It was my doctoral thesis, or at least part of it. Amobarbital and sodium thiopental have their uses, but I was able to synthesize a drug that surpasses them for effectiveness as a truth agent.” He looked critically into the Soldier’s eyes, one at a time, holding up the eyelids with his thumb. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” he snapped, and jerked his head away from the doctor’s hands. He didn’t want to tell them anything. Not about the woman at the hotel, not about the postcard, not even about the root beer barrels. 

“We may need another minute for the drug to take full effect.” The doctor turned to the old man. “I administered a significantly higher dose than I would normally have done for an ordinary man of his size, but his system is fighting it.”

“I want the truth from you, Soldier.” The old man gestured for a chair, and the doctor brought one over. “I want to know what made you run. I want to know why you deliberately hid from me, and I want to know what you were hoping to gain by it.”

The Soldier clenched his jaw and stared into his lap. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to tell them anything. 

“It’s not your business,” he heard himself say, as if the words had just slipped from his mouth of their own accord. “I don’t want to tell you.”

The doctor looked nervously over at the old man, whose eyes had narrowed significantly at the Soldier’s words. “I think it’s taking effect, sir.”

“Everything you do is my business, Soldier.” The old man leaned forward in the chair, his eyes locked on the Soldier’s and his face stormy. “Your work is crucial to the future of the Soviet Union, and I won’t have you unaccounted for. Especially given the amount of time and money the Motherland has invested in you.” 

He stared unblinkingly into the Soldier’s face. “Now answer my questions. Why didn’t you go to the extraction point?”

“There was a woman at the hotel,” the Soldier said unwillingly. “And she wanted to know what a Brooklyn boy was doing all the way out in Dallas…”

The old man’s expression didn’t change. “Continue.”

The Soldier talked. He talked and talked, and before long, he had told them everything. The buses and trains he had taken, the newspaper he had read, the postcard in the pocket of his corduroy jacket. Even the root beer barrels. It all spilled from him like a waterfall, and he was powerless to stop it.

“I just wish I had made it to Brooklyn.” His voice was tinged with exhaustion. “I wanted to see what was there for me.”

“You threw everything into jeopardy because of something a random woman said to you?” The old man’s face was a mask of controlled anger. “Because you wanted to see what there was in Brooklyn for you? Well, there’s nothing.” 

“I don’t…” The Soldier shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”

The old man said it flatly and without a moment’s hesitation. “There’s nothing there for you. There never was.”

“You’re lying.” He couldn’t stop himself. “You have to be lying.”

“You went looking for trouble.” The old man kept looking him in the eyes, a strange light shining in his own. “And you found it.” He turned to the doctor. “Wipe this mission. Wipe everything from the past month. And then put him back on ice.”

Off to the side, the newer, younger - but dangerous - doctor moved to power up the machine, and the Soldier felt a moment of both gut-sliding fear and startling clarity.

“You’re hiding something.” He looked angrily at the old man. “You’re lying. I know you are. You wouldn’t be doing this otherwise.”

“Like I said, Soldier.” There was something like regret behind the anger in the old man’s eyes. “You went looking for trouble.”

\---

Steve felt ready to throw up. 

Not because of the chair, not because of the fact that they were about to wipe Bucky’s mind again, not even because he’d come so close to discovering the truth. He’d even called Karpov out on his lies, and Karpov hadn’t even bothered to deny it. 

No, the nausea came from seeing a very different Bucky than he’d seen in any of the previous memory walks. Before, with Lukin - and even with Rodchenko - he’d acted like a beaten dog. He’d been cowed, sullen, even fearful. He’d suffered the worst kind of abuse from Lukin and never lifted a hand to defend himself. He’d been slapped across the face, jerked around by his hair, showered with insults and humiliation, and absorbed it all. But now?

Steve squeezed his eyes shut against the pain of the memories. Bucky had flirted with that woman behind the concierge’s desk at the hotel, just like he’d been able to do when they were back in Brooklyn before the war. He’d scoffed at Rodchenko, looked down on him as inexperienced. He’d shown the kind of backbone Steve had always remembered him having.

But even worse - far, far worse - was the almost paternalistic relationship Bucky had seemed to have with Karpov in Afghanistan.

Back in Brooklyn, they’d both been pretty close with old Mr. Cicalese, the man who owned the drugstore down the block. They’d bought his penny candy, listened to his admonishments and his scoldings, plinked away at cans with Bucky’s air rifle in the alley behind his store until he’d come out to chase them away. And when Bucky had gotten older, he’d gone to work for him. Mr. Cicalese had even offered to let Bucky take over the business from him, since all his own children had found other careers for themselves. And if it hadn’t been for the war…

Steve gritted his teeth. Bucky and Mr. Cicalese had talked to each other in the same way he’d just seen Bucky talk to Karpov. And there was no other word for that but blasphemy.

How much worse was it going to get, the farther they went through Bucky’s memories?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, concerns, feedback, kudos, and all that jazz are warmly welcomed, encouraged, appreciated, and hoped for!


	33. Memory Lane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Steve was beginning to feel like he was missing the point somewhere. “It ought to be obvious by now. What’s the problem?”_
> 
> _“I found something.” Jean's mouth thinned into a serious line. “Something you need to think long and hard about exposing him to.” She gestured toward the television on the wall._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Russian characters are speaking, assume they are speaking Russian. No [language brackets] needed.

**somewhere**  
**a moment later**

Bucky sprinted across rooftops of red tile in 1968, a hail of bullets knocking chips out of the stone and pursuing him every step of the way. His team lay scattered in his wake, their bodies sprawled where they’d fallen. At the edge of the highest roof, he hurled himself out into space and disappeared into the shadows. 

The scene shifted. Bucky sat in the chair, talking to Karpov. He hadn’t been able to assassinate his target in Beijing because the man had recognized him - from the war. As the American who’d saved his life. 

Karpov’s response to Bucky’s confusion was to wipe the mission from Bucky’s mind, along with everything even remotely linked to it, and put him back into cryosleep. 

More missions followed. They watched through the crosshairs of Bucky’s telescopic sight as a man’s head exploded in a sweltering jungle. They watched from the rooftop of a building in a bustling city as Bucky silently entered a penthouse through the window and held a dark-skinned man’s mouth shut with his metal hand while slitting his throat. They watched from the shadows of an ornate brick building as Bucky pushed the button on a remote and triggered an explosion that blasted an official-looking limousine into blackened scraps of metal.

On and on it went, one atrocity after the other, as they went backward through Bucky’s memories. And then suddenly, Steve was standing with Jean in the living room of his apartment in Red Hook. Bucky and Natasha were nowhere to be seen.

“Sorry for the abrupt scene change,” Jean explained. “Bucky and Natasha are at the beach. I wanted to talk to you privately, so I found another safe anchor from your own memories.” 

“Uh…” Steve looked around, feeling a sudden unease. What was happening, that Jean needed to talk to him apart from Bucky and Natasha? 

“Sure.” He cleared his throat, a growing cold spot forming in his stomach. “What did you need to say?”

Jean’s smile was both soft and sad. “It’s obvious to anyone who pays attention that you care for him very much.” She seated herself on the couch and gestured for Steve to join her. “I think that’s underselling it, actually. It’s obvious that you’re in love with him.”

“Well…” Steve suddenly felt even more off-balance. Jean could read minds; he hadn’t expected to have to tell her the details of the new relationship the three of them had begun. He’d just imagined she’d pick it up along with everything else she touched in Bucky’s mind, and in their shared headspace.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, I am.” He smiled slightly, his eyes dropping to the floor. “It’s new, and I still don’t think any of us have got it all figured out yet, but we’re all happy.”

Jean nodded. “And it’s also obvious how much his recovery means to you.”

“Well, yeah.” Steve was beginning to feel like he was missing the point somewhere. “It ought to be obvious by now. What’s the problem?”

“I found something.” Her mouth thinned into a serious line. “Something you need to think long and hard about exposing him to.” She gestured toward the television on the wall. 

The screen flickered to life, revealing a broad street bordered by grass on either side. An open-top car was traveling down it, flanked by other cars and police motorcycles. In the back seat of the car, a woman in a pink pillbox hat and a matching pink suit sat smiling beside -

“Oh God.” Steve couldn’t move. His body went numb, and all he could do was sit and watch in paralyzed horror as President Kennedy’s skull exploded from Bucky’s perfectly-placed shot.

“He doesn’t know,” he found himself babbling as he turned to Jean with icy fear pulsing through his body. “What are you going to do?”

“But you knew.” She gestured toward the television again and the screen mercifully went black. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Steve felt sick. “I knew. Natasha knows. She translated his file for me. But I burned the pages. I didn’t -” His voice caught on something ragged in his throat. “I didn’t want him to have to pay for it. It wasn’t his fault; you have to know it wasn’t his fault.”

Jean studied him for a moment. “You and Natasha unintentionally solved one of the great mysteries of the twentieth century.” A beat, then, “But you’re worried that if people found out the truth, he’d be punished for it. Because the actual culprits, the ones who made all the decisions, are dead.”

“Am I wrong?” He lifted his chin and looked her in the eyes. “You know there’d be nothing any of us could do to save him if this ever got out, no matter whether it was his fault or not.” He clenched his jaw. “People would need a scapegoat. And like you said, everybody else is dead.”

She nodded. “Sounds like you answered your own question.”

“I’ve only got one question that matters right now.” He held her gaze. “What are you going to do now that you know?”

Jean shrugged. “What would I do? Are you worried I’m going to tell someone?” 

“I don’t know what I’m worried about.” Steve sighed, shaking his head. “I guess I just felt safer knowing that Natasha and I were the only ones who knew.”

That soft, sad smile settled on her lips again. “I have no love for our government, or any government, really. They have historically not been… kind… to me and my own.”

He looked down at the floor between his feet for a long moment, then looked back up at Jean again. There was real compassion in those deep green eyes of hers. And as powerful as she was - probably the most powerful person on Earth - it was good to know that that compassion was there. Her power made her a strong ally, yes, but her compassion was what made her a good person. And good people - unabashedly and wholeheartedly good people - were hard to come by.

“You don’t deserve it,” he found himself saying. “All the awful things mutants have had to deal with. It’s not right, and I’m sorry.”

She nodded again, and a moment of silence passed between them. Then she said, “You need to make a decision. We can show this memory to Bucky, if you like. I know you feel it’s important he receives the whole truth. But first I have a question for you.”

“Go,” he said without hesitation.

She looked at him. “Do you want him to know the truth or do you want him to get better?”

In that moment, everything he might otherwise have said about false equivalencies or dialectic thinking or the lesser of two evils simply died on his lips and in his heart. Because the truth was that, in this situation, there was no choice at all.

“I don’t want him to ever know.” Steve felt the lump rise in his throat again. “It’s bad enough that I know. That any of us know.” He shook his head. “Bucky would never recover from it. And if anybody else ever found out…”

Bucky’s life would be over. Simply and brutally. He’d be taken away from him, from Natasha, from everyone who could ever do him the least bit of good, and thrown into a hole for the rest of his life. And even if he didn’t die at the hands of some government operative or other, stabbed in his sleep or poisoned or simply gunned down during a fabricated riot, he’d never see the sun again. And all the progress he’d made, all the healing, all the recovery, all the struggle back towards his humanity, would be gone.

Forever.

Jean put a gentle hand on his arm. “No one else is going to find out, and I’ll leave it to you to explain your decision to Natasha on your own time, as you see fit.”

Steve breathed out a shaky sigh of relief. Jean’s hand on his arm radiated comfort, and he was glad of it. Bucky was fortunate to have her help. All of them were.

“What about Bucky?” He looked back over at her. “How do we keep him from remembering it?”

“Oh, that part’s easy.” Jean shrugged. “When I was much younger and still learning how to use my gifts, the professor didn’t want to risk overwhelming me with both telekinesis and telepathy. So he locked the telepathy away until I was ready for it.” Another shrug. “For one memory? That’s like locking something away in a deposit box.”

Steve nodded slowly. “Okay.” He sighed again. “Thank you so much for this, Jean. I don’t even know how to tell you how much this means to me. If there’s anything I can ever do for you - anything SHIELD can ever do…”

A small smile flitted across Jean’s mouth. “Let’s get back to Bucky and Natasha. I’m sure they’re wondering where we’ve gotten off to.”

\---

The two of them faced each other on the field, the training simulation having come to a messy end. She stood dressed in widow’s black, a pistol in one hand, a grenade in the other. And maybe he should have been angry or annoyed - she had interrupted the simulation, after all, and had been unauthorized to do so - but he was smirking at her, thumbs hitched in his belt loops, and she wondered if she might close the gap between them.

“Bring me better men then,” the Soldier told his handler - a grizzled man named Gogol Feliksovich - without breaking the Black Widow’s gaze. “Or more women like her.”

Not too long after, the Soldier stood in the middle of a locker room, stripping out of his imperialist American field uniform. It had been useful for a training exercise and little else, and he hoped he wouldn’t be ordered back into it.

The men they had assigned him to train were of a particular kind of uselessness - clumsy, loud, and overly confident. Nothing like some of the candidates he had come across in the Red Room over the years.

Certainly nothing like _her._

He stepped into one of the shower stalls and spent a minute or two letting hot water cascade over his body. And then he darted a hand out of the stall and fastened it onto a wrist, dragging a startled Black Widow into the shower with him.

“You can’t sneak up on me, Natalia.” He smirked. “You’re not good enough yet.”

“Speak English.” She returned the smirk. “I need the practice.”

“So…” he said in English, pulling her towel away and tossing it over the stall. “Let’s practice.” His hands went around her waist. “You can start by telling me, in detail, why you’re sneaking around a locker room in nothing but a towel.”

“I’m not.” Her arms slid around his shoulders, and the front of her body was suddenly pressed up against his. “I’m taking a well-earned hot shower after a very successful training session.” She arched an eyebrow and gave him a small, devilish smile. “Looks like you had the same idea. Isn’t that lucky, now?”

He leaned in to kiss her, and the scene melted away…

They lay together in bed, sweaty and exhausted, in a small room with grey cinderblock walls. Clothing was strewn about the floor, along with what appeared to be English language magazines.

The Soldier plucked one of the magazines - _Good Housekeeping_ , March 1957 - from the floor and flipped through it quickly before tossing it aside in disgust.

“Why do you read this imperialistic propaganda?”

“For the baking recipes.” She smirked at him, then settled her head back against his chest as she trailed her fingers up and down the length of his metal arm. “Actually, it helps me with my English. And there are little tidbits of culture here and there as well. You’d be surprised how much it’s helped me blend in.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, so you can pretend to be as vapid and materialistic as they are. It’s a waste of your talents, Natalia.”

“Well, I’m not going to disagree with you too strongly.” She shrugged and continued tracing the lines on his arm. “Still, I take my work as seriously as you take yours. And in all my missions, no one’s ever suspected me of being anything other than what I let them believe I am.”

He planted a lazy kiss on her forehead. “I would expect nothing less.”

The scene shifted again, and the two of them stood facing each other.

The room was large and empty, save for a wide square space covered in mats and ringed by a single row of chairs. In the chairs sat an array of men in suits and various military uniforms, watching their movements intently.

He darted in, feinting a low kick to her knee to draw her guard away from a spinning high kick with the heel of his other foot. She saw it coming, though - of course she did - and dropped into a low, spinning crouch to slice his supporting foot out from under him with a sweeping kick.

Back and forth they went, pulling out ever more spectacular moves. Some of it was to try to surprise each other and possibly gain the upper hand, but they both wanted to impress the Politburo as well. And, of course, there was the fact that this was the way they warmed each other up for later on...

The Soldier mopped his sweaty brow with a towel and took a long pull on a glass of water. “Comrade General Karpov seemed particularly pleased.”

Which was the most important thing, after all.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him displeased with you.” She toweled her own face and shook back her damp hair. “He likes to show you off, I think. Like a prizewinning racehorse or something.”

He scowled into his drinking glass, but there was no heat behind it. “And I think they were all rather taken with you.”

“I think you’re rather taken with me.” She smiled mischievously back at him. “And speaking of which, how long do you suppose we have before they all stop falling all over themselves to congratulate one another on a job well done?”

He hummed and looked up at the ceiling, pretending to consider the idea. “Did they break out the vodka?”

“Probably.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. “Which, depending on how you look at it, could mean that we have a bit longer before they get back.”

“Well…” A slow grin spread across his face. “I do need a shower.”

They continued to sift through memories.

In the winter of 1957, the Soldier suffered a psychotic break - remembering the name of his sister Rebecca, who shared a name with his assigned target - and murdered his support team. General Karpov ordered a mind wipe and was willing to let the situation go, until another incident happened that spring.

The Soldier had been sent to assassinate a Soviet defector. However, the man had had a daughter - not included in his mission dossier - who had appeared and spoiled the kill shot. The Soldier had followed the pair of them into a dead-end alley, and while the Black Widow tended to the girl, he carried out the assassination not ten feet away.

The Soldier was irate during his debriefing, throwing the dossier at one of the officers and insisting that it should have included information on the child. When the officer scoffed and asked if it should also include information on the target’s pets, the Soldier began yelling at the assembled group, to their collective, wide-eyed shock.

Another officer jumped to his feet. “Comrade General Karpov will hear about this, Soldier. You mark my words.”

“Go ahead and fucking tell him,” the Soldier shot back, and a moment later, Gogol Feliksovich intervened, clearing the Politburo from the room and shutting the heavy wooden door.

“You do realize,” Gogol Feliksovich said with deep concern engraved in every line on his gray-bearded face, “you were yelling at them in English.”

The Soldier glowered at him through narrowed eyes. “I wasn’t.”

“You don’t think so?” Gogol Feliksovich looked soberly at him from under bushy, lowered eyebrows. “Because if I noticed, then the rest of them certainly did. Which means that Comrade General Karpov will hear about it too.”

“Like I said, go ahead and tell him.” The Soldier folded his arms. “And while you’re at it, tell him some members of the Politburo can’t manage to put together useful mission dossiers.”

“This isn’t a game, Soldier!” The frustration in Gogol Feliksovich’s voice actually seemed to border on fear. “Comrade General Karpov still has to answer to them. A display like that could diminish him in their eyes. To say nothing of your carryings-on with the Black Widow Romanova.”

The Soldier snorted at that. Instantly. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come now, Soldier.” Gogol Feliksovich’s face turned sour. “You didn’t seriously believe no one would notice, did you? The both of you are important enough to the Soviet Union to warrant constant observation.” That fearful paranoia came back into his eyes. “It’s just that until now, they’ve been willing to let it go unaddressed.”

The Soldier said nothing.

“Don’t you have anything to say to that?” Gogol Feliksovich exploded.

The Soldier glowered at him. “Can I go now?”

It didn’t end there.

Of course not.

After one last liaison with the Black Widow, the Soldier was brought before Comrade General Karpov and Comrade Doctor Pushkin - a tall, thin man with neat gray hair and round glasses - and questioned at length.

“So you expect me to believe that you simply forgot all about proper discipline and respect?” Comrade General Karpov was quite upset. Not about the Soldier’s fraternization with the Black Widow - he seemed more disappointed than angry about that - but about his outburst in front of the Party officials. “Or did you just decide to ignore it?”

“As I said, sir,” the Soldier spoke slowly and carefully, “I completed the mission. In front of the target’s daughter, no less. It was…” He licked his lips. “Upsetting.”

“It was an assassination mission, Soldier.” Comrade General Karpov’s expression darkened. “Of which you have had many, none of which I would assume have been overly pleasant. What excuse does that give you to lose your composure as you did in front of some of the highest-ranking officials in the entire Soviet Union?”

The Soldier bit down on his tongue and stared into his lap for a long moment. When he looked up, his eyes were pained. “What happens to the child?”

Comrade General Karpov looked at the Soldier for a long moment, during the course of which his expression softened somewhat. He looked briefly over at Comrade Doctor Pushkin, whose expression did not perceptibly change, and then back to the Soldier again.

“Romanova handed her over to the local orphanage.” The look in Comrade General Karpov’s eyes said that he knew exactly what kind of a life the girl would have in a shabby, underfunded state-run orphanage. “Better that than a life on the street. Or certainly the life of a traitor’s child.”

“Perhaps she will end up serving the Motherland herself,” interjected Comrade Doctor Pushkin in a mild tone. “The Red Room does recruit heavily from the orphanages, after all. It has a sort of poetry to it.”

“So I’ve killed the father and the girl?” the Soldier said bitterly. 

Most Red Room recruits never lived to see adolescence, let alone adulthood, after all. The child would either suffer in an orphanage or very likely die in the Red Room.

“No, Soldier.” Comrade General Karpov shook his head. “He brought his fate upon himself, and hers as well. He knew what would happen to them both because of his treachery, and yet he chose to follow that path regardless. He obviously had little concern for the well-being of his own child, to risk her safety so recklessly.”

Comrade General Karpov’s voice had taken on an odd quality. There was still frustration lurking there, even a tinge of anger. But mostly, there was concern.

“Your behavior has been erratic lately, Soldier.” His brows knit. “Comrade Doctor Pushkin and I feel it is time for your conditioning to be supplemented by periods of rest.”

“Rest?” The Soldier frowned. “Like a furlough?”

“Something like that.” Comrade Doctor Pushkin seemed to smile as if at a private joke.

“You will be placed into suspended animation for a few months,” said Comrade General Karpov as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “Cryogenic hibernation. Your body will not age, and your mind will be permitted perfect rest. Then, when there is work for you to do, we will wake you.”

The Soldier’s eyes widened in a sickening mixture of horror and confusion. “Sir…?”

“Oh, come now, Soldier.” Comrade Doctor Pushkin sounded faintly exasperated. “It’s a painless operation.”

“So you intend to kill me?” The Soldier focused his horrified gaze on Comrade General Karpov. “As punishment? Are you going to replace me with a new operative, then?”

“Kill you?” Comrade General Karpov sounded shocked. “After everything the Soviet Union has invested in you for all these years? I should say not.” He shook his head. “Were you not listening, Soldier? You will sleep, nothing more, and waken when the Motherland has need of you.”

Comrade Doctor Pushkin launched into a lengthy and detailed explanation of how the cryogenic freezing process worked, and the Soldier only half-listened until he burst out with:

“I don’t want this.” He shook his head frantically. “I don’t want to be _frozen_. I shouldn’t even have to say that.”

“Soldier, this is necessary to stabilize your conditioning.” Comrade General Karpov’s voice took on its usual note of command. “And it is also a direct order.”

“I don’t…” The Soldier’s expression was nothing short of pure terror. “I don’t want this, sir.”

Comrade General Karpov’s eyes seemed to harden. “I think we’re beyond that now, Soldier.” He took a single step forward. “It is not about what you want. It is about what I am ordering you to do.”

There was no way out.

None.

The Soldier swallowed any further objections down. Steeled himself. And then forced himself to say the words.

“Yes, sir.”

And despite what Comrade Doctor Pushkin had said, the procedure was awful. Painless, but awful. They might have pumped him full of sedative first, but that didn’t quell the nauseating horror that came over him as the sudden freezing blast--

\---

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Steve felt nauseous. Listening to Bucky talk to Karpov like a favorite uncle had been bad enough; the near miss with the Kennedy assassination had been worse. But seeing the awful look in Bucky’s eyes and the horror in his voice at the prospect of being put into cryosleep - and then, even worse, the terrible resignation that had come over him when he’d been ordered to comply - that had pushed Steve over the limit.

He closed his eyes, shook his head madly, and thought of the beach. Thought of the Cyclone and Nathan’s hot dogs and a time when nothing had been this horrible, and when he opened his eyes again, he expected to see the sand and the boardwalk. Except he didn’t.

What he saw was the green tiled hallway.

Bucky stood in the open doorway, his flimsy bathrobe flapping in the fierce wind, looking lost and frightened. Outside, the windswept, frozen expanse of Siberia stretched on forever, the horizon obscured by blowing snow.

“I’m sorry, Bucky.” He stayed behind Bucky, putting both hands on Bucky’s shoulders and bowing his head. “You should never have had to face this.”

Bucky didn’t turn to look at him, and when he spoke, his voice was very soft, nearly lost to the wind. “Face what?”

“All this.” Steve shook his head, tightening his grip on Bucky’s shoulders and wishing he could take him away. Wishing he’d gone down into the ravine that day in 1945 to try and find him. Wishing he’d reached out his hand just a little bit quicker, or just a little bit farther, or…

“All of it.” He squeezed his eyes shut, bending his head forward until his forehead rested against the back of Bucky’s neck. “You should have had better.”

If Bucky objected to Steve’s sudden closeness, he didn’t show it. Instead, after a moment, he said, “Better than what?”

“Than being here.” Steve didn’t look up at the snow. “Than the awful things that happened to you, and everything that’s going to happen to you.” He let out a ragged breath. “Than being alone.”

“I’ve always been alone,” Bucky said quietly. “The doctors said I died alone. They said I was very lucky to be found.” Very softly he said, “Lucky me.”

“You weren’t always alone, Buck.” Steve’s voice caught, his eyes burned, and he could feel himself shaking. “You had Dugan and Morita and the rest of the Commandos during the war. You had your ma and mine, and Becca and Mr. Cicalese before that.” He swallowed hard. “You had me.”

“I don’t know those names,” Bucky whispered. “They said I had no one. No family. No name.”

“Well, they fucking lied, didn’t they?” Steve felt anger creep into his voice - anger at Karpov and Pushkin, who’d so thoroughly ruined Bucky’s mind that he couldn’t even remember that he’d had a family, let alone what their names were. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. Your mother’s name is Winifred. Your sister’s Rebecca.” He squeezed Bucky’s shoulders. “Come on, Buck, try to remember.”

Bucky shook his head. “There’s no way out.”

“Steve?” Natasha was behind him suddenly, her hand coming to rest on the small of his back. “I thought I’d find you here.”

“I keep on finding him here.” He shook his head bitterly, clenching his jaw. “We can’t go anywhere in his head without running into something horrible. But I don’t even know what this is supposed to be.”

“Jean said it’s a memory block.” Gently she rubbed his back. “And we’re probably going to keep on coming here until we figure out how to unblock it.”

“It’s not right,” Steve said past the lump in his throat. “This part of him is stuck here, in this Godawful place, and he can’t get out.” He gritted his teeth. “Not even in his own head.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Natasha said, while leading him away from Bucky and back down the tiled hallway.

They stepped out onto the sand, both of them squinting at the vibrant sunset splashed across water in streaks of purple and red. Bucky and Jean sat barefoot in the sand, each of them drinking from a cardboard cup of what was probably soda.

“You said you can’t do this anymore,” Bucky said, without meeting Steve’s gaze. “Did you want to stop then?”

“I… no.” Steve sat down in the sand next to Bucky, sighing heavily as he did so. “I’m not going to get in the way of your recovery, Bucky, but it hurts watching them do those things to you.” He hung his head and stared hard at the sand. “Having to watch it happen, knowing I can’t do anything about it, knowing I can’t even punish them for it because they all died such a long time ago…” 

He sighed again, frustrated and angry and drained. “I just want to see you get better, is all.” He leaned sideways, his shoulder coming to rest against Bucky’s. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

Quietly Jean got up and wandered a ways down the beach as Natasha sat down on the other side of Bucky and leaned against him.

Bucky swirled the soda around in its cup. “You wouldn’t be getting in the way of my recovery, Steve. Natasha can stay with me.” He licked his lips. “If you don’t want to see any more, Natasha can stay.”

“What? No!” Steve looked up sharply. “Buck, I’m not going to abandon you. Not when you need me. Not now, not ever.”

He turned, looking Bucky in the eyes. Reminding himself just how much farther Bucky had come down the road to recovery in the past couple of weeks alone, and how much better he’d gotten since the beginning. And then, almost without meaning to, he flung his arms around Bucky’s neck and hugged him tightly.

“Till the end of the line,” he said into Bucky’s shoulder. “Right?”

“You’re _such_ a sap, Rogers.” He could hear the smile in Natasha’s voice.

“Right,” Bucky murmured. “No lies there.”

“So what?” Steve didn’t lift his head from where it was, and he didn’t let up on the hug. He did smile, though.

And so they continued.

\---

They moved backward through the 1950’s. The Winter Soldier never questioned orders, never botched a mission. He was used to great effect in the Red Room as a trainer - a fact Natasha could attest to personally.

He had a way of watching them train - of standing there, tall and muscular and imposing, his dark eyes watching their every move without blinking. Sometimes he’d fold his arms across his chest, his gleaming metal arm with its conspicuous Soviet star moving as fluidly as the rest of him. Some of the girls faltered when his eyes focused on them, intimidated by his scrutiny and the thought that he might be sizing them up for culling. But Natasha was not one of those.

When he looked at her, studying her, she wanted him to see how impressive she could be. How effortless she could make her effort seem. How much better suited to the role of a Black Widow she was than any of the rest of them. And one day, she got the chance to show him firsthand.

They sparred. He was much faster and more agile than he looked, which she found out the hard way. She only just barely got out of the way of a devastating high kick that would easily have knocked her cold, and she was on the defensive for far longer than she wanted to be. In fact, she knew within seconds of his first move that she was outclassed. He was nearly as quick as she was, and she was nowhere near a match for his power. But she was going to impress him, damn it, even if she lost.

He fired off a punch from his metal arm, a punch that would have caused serious injury if she’d taken it in the head or chest. But she twisted out of the way - just barely - and threw her best trick at him. She caught his wrist, swung her legs up and scissored them around his neck, and threw herself backwards with everything she had. And it worked - she took him off his feet and brought him down to the ground.

Of course, he managed to roll with it and very quickly tagged her with a couple of well-placed blows to end the match shortly thereafter, but she’d managed to accomplish her goal.

He stared down at her, his face impassive. After a moment, he offered her a hand, pulling her onto her feet.

“Impressive.”

It was all he said, but it was enough. She moved back into the crowd of girls.

Time continued to move backward. The early 1950s into the late 1940s, every new memory as soul-deadening and sickening as the last. 

It would have been impossible to keep track of the dead, except that General Karpov kept a list. But no one kept track of the collateral damage.

In the summer of 1946, the Soldier completed his physical rehabilitation and training in one the Soviet Union’s many secret military bases. The training had taken a year; occasionally they tested him for both marksmanship and ability to unquestioningly follow orders.

He’d stood at the top of a high watchtower and looked down into the courtyard at the group of prisoners they’d brought up. They were condemned men, all of them, and they all bore the marks of a long, abusive, and exhausting imprisonment. When the prison gate was opened and they were instructed to run for it, they all must have known it was hopeless. But still, the lure of the open door and the freedom that lay beyond it was too powerful to resist. And as he looked down at them through the scope of his rifle, he watched them gather every ounce of beaten will and exhausted determination they had left and run for the promise of freedom.

Not one of them made it within ten meters of the gate.

“Well done, Comrade.” His handler lowered his binoculars with a satisfied smile beneath his bushy, Stalin-inspired mustache. “Good clean hits, all of them. Though next time, I want at least eight head shots.”

The Soldier nodded. “Of course, Comrade.” 

His eyes seemed dead.

A few days later, he was called into the office of Comrade General Karpov. He had not seen the General since his release from the hospital a year beforehand, but his training had kept him busy, and anyway he saw Comrade Doctor Pushkin often enough for conditioning in the chair.

He hated that part, but Doctor Pushkin had explained that it was necessary to counteract and heal the effects of the brain damage the Soldier had sustained in the fall that had nearly killed him.

The doctor had explained, more than once, that the Soldier was lucky to be alive at all. The chair was a small price to pay and it would ensure that he remained fit to serve the Motherland. 

The Soldier stood at parade rest in front of Comrade General Karpov’s desk, clad in his usual olive green training fatigues.

“Comrade Winter Soldier.” Comrade General Karpov looked up from where he sat in his chair and smiled almost triumphantly. “Comrade Doctor Pushkin informs me that you are responding well to your conditioning. And your handlers tell me you are ready for field work.” He raised an eyebrow. “Do you feel ready?”

Any response other than a yes would not be acceptable, and so the Soldier didn’t bat an eye. “Of course, sir.”

“Good.” Comrade General Karpov’s smile grew even more triumphant, if such a thing was possible. “I have the perfect one in mind for you.” 

Disguised as an American soldier - which made him feel slightly disgusted - he had no trouble infiltrating the American army base in the newly created West Germany. Once there, as per Comrade General Karpov’s orders, he joined a group of Americans as they drank and caroused into the late hours. And when they were sufficiently lulled into a false sense of security, he killed a half dozen of them and slipped out of the base undetected.

There were no specific targets. No names, no ranks, no specializations. His orders had simply been to kill as many American soldiers as he possibly could within a set time frame.

“Well done, Soldier.” Comrade General Karpov seemed quite pleased with the outcome of the mission. “Now the imperialists will not be so arrogant as they sit outside the Iron Curtain.” He smiled. “I wonder what must have gone through the minds of those men when they realized one of their own had come to kill them?”

The question was clearly rhetorical, and so the Soldier waited. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a flash of satisfaction; the year of training and his hospitalization had been worth it, and Comrade General Karpov was pleased with him.

“You’re finally ready, Soldier.” There was profound satisfaction in Comrade General Karpov’s voice. “Ready to go out into the field and make the Motherland proud.”

And he would.

Of course he would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand I'm back! Went MIA last week, because Reverse Big Bang is sucking up a lot of my writing time, but hey, I got one Stucky fic done and am halfway through another one. Progress!
> 
> As always, questions, comments, and random conversation are totally awesome, so sock it to me.
> 
> ETA: As of 4/23/17, chapter 1 has some amazing art by yawpkatsi!


	34. Subliminal Trek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“It’s fake then.” Steve nearly spat in his angry frustration. Turning on his heel, he stormed off. “Fine. I’m going to go find the real stuff.”_
> 
> _Wrenching open the door, he stalked down the hallway in a foul temper. It wasn’t until he practically collided with Bucky at the open door to the Siberian tundra that he realized he’d happened upon the memory block again. And once he’d gotten over the initial surprise, he understood why._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're back!
> 
> As always, if they're ["speaking like this,"], they're speaking Russian.

**somewhere**  
**a moment later**

Steve had watched in mute, sick horror as Bucky had cut down those six men. 

Karpov had ordered Bucky to go out and find Americans to murder, and Bucky’s mind had been so warped that he’d obeyed without question. Never knowing - never even imagining - that those men had been his brothers. Men who’d fought for the same ideals, worn the same uniform, faced the same horrors, won the same victories, and suffered the same losses. Men who’d gone through the meat grinder that had been the war, men who’d survived against all odds and wanted simply to enjoy an evening’s recreation before getting up the following day to serve their country all over again.

Men who’d been condemned to death simply because they’d been Americans, by a man with no other motive to hate them save that they were Americans.

He’d have killed Karpov with his bare hands if he could have, for doing that to Bucky. 

And Bucky wouldn’t look at him either. He stood close to Natasha, avoiding Steve’s gaze, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and the brim of his cap pulled down low.

_You don’t know how lucky you are to be dead, you son of a bitch._ Steve clenched his jaw as he looked at Karpov, who sat there in his comfortable chair in his comfortable office, his smug smile frozen on his face in the midst of the halted memory. _And I hope to God you’re roasting in Hell right now._

But, as Natasha had so rightly pointed out to him not too long ago, his energy was wasted on hating a dead man. And besides, it would have been unforgivably selfish of him not to realize that as much as watching the memories had been painful for him, it had clearly been worse for Bucky.

“Bucky…” He put his hands on Bucky’s shoulders, tried to find the words that he needed to say, but only managed to come up with “I’m sorry.”

Bucky chewed on his lip and continued to stare at the floor. “For what?”

“For what those madmen did to you.” 

Steve shook his head and looked over at Natasha for a moment. She looked back at him, her eyes filled with genuine sympathy - but not for Bucky, he realized. For him. Because of what watching Bucky slaughter his fellow American servicemen had done to him.

He turned back to Bucky and wrapped his arms around him. “We’re going to get through this together, Buck. I promise you that.”

“You don’t…” Bucky sighed, breath warm against Steve’s neck. “You don’t have to keep doing this.”

“Yes, I do.” Steve hugged Bucky tighter, looking up at the ceiling. The wide-bladed fan had stopped dead in mid-revolution, its tarnished chain bowed strangely at the end of its swing. “I absolutely do have to keep doing this. If I didn’t - if I let you face this without me to help you get through it - then I wouldn’t be me.”

Bucky pulled his hands from his pockets and slid his arms around Steve, returning the embrace, though he didn’t say anything.

A moment later, Steve felt Natasha’s hand on the small of his back. “Come on, boys. What do we want to do now?”

“What do I _want_ to do?” Steve looked over at her and smiled what felt to him like a tired and somewhat sad smile. “What I _want_ to do is head home and crawl under the blankets until we’re all ready to face the world again.” 

“Sounds good to me,” Bucky muttered into Steve’s neck.

“But that’s not what we need to do.” Steve leaned his head forward slightly, his forehead coming to rest against Bucky’s. “There’s still a lot farther to go, isn’t there?”

“Yes and no.” Jean was perched on the edge of Karpov’s desk, a tumbler of vodka in hand. She took a sip and winced. “There’s his service during the war and his childhood, but we’re not going to find those so easily.”

“Because of the memory block.” Steve’s voice became bitter. He tightened his arms around Bucky protectively, as though that simple act might be enough to keep the tiled hallway from forming around them again. 

“What’s it going to take for us to find a way around that?” Natasha had looped her arms around both their waists. In that moment, Steve realized all over again just how grateful - and lucky - they both were to have her.

“Trial and error.” Jean set the tumbler aside. “Take a look at this.”

\---

The hospital was well-lit, its floors and walls of greenish tile kept immaculately clean. Here and there were other patients, garbed in hospital pajamas and bathrobes, walking or wheeling themselves through the corridors with IV bottles clinking on poles above them. Nurses in starched white bustled through the halls as well, perpetually on some errand or other, and white-coated doctors ambled from room to room checking on their charges.

The State Anthem of the Soviet Union crackled from a radio speaker somewhere.

The soldier sat up in his hospital bed, a nurse by his side, eating his way ravenously through a large bowl of soup. The nurse smiled at something he’d said - a bit flirtatiously - and it was clear that such interactions were a daily occurrence. He seemed well-rested, well-fed, and altogether well-cared-for.

“Do any of them even know?” Steve asked, shaking his head angrily. “Do they have any idea who he really is?”

Jean looked at him. “It doesn’t matter. None of this is real.”

Bucky frowned. “It feels pretty real.”

Jean nodded. “That’s the point. But these memories were implanted.”

“Implanted?” Steve sounded horrified and disgusted. “You mean they just made up memories for him and stuck them in his head?”

“Sounds like something they’d do,” Natasha responded dryly. “How can you tell?”

“Practice.” Jean waved a hand and the activity of the hospital froze around them. “If you look closely enough, you can see the cracks in it. But he was never meant to look closely, and to the untrained eye, this looks entirely real.”

Bucky sighed.

“It’s fake then.” Steve nearly spat in his angry frustration. Turning on his heel, he stormed off. “Fine. I’m going to go find the real stuff.”

Wrenching open the door, he stalked down the hallway in a foul temper. It wasn’t until he practically collided with Bucky at the open door to the Siberian tundra that he realized he’d happened upon the memory block again. And once he’d gotten over the initial surprise, he understood why.

This is where it had come from. The same hospital. The same antiseptic tiles. The same two-piece pajamas and bathrobe. It was all from the same place. 

And Bucky stood there at the door, staring out at the endlessly blowing snow. 

“Bucky?” Steve put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder and gripped it tightly. “We’re going to get you out of here. I promise.”

Bucky didn’t even look at him. “Can’t you see?” he said softly. “There is no way out.”

“There is.” Steve slid both his arms around Bucky’s shoulders. “I swear to God, Buck, I’m going to find a way to get you out. There’s got to be a way, and I’m going to find it for you.”

“No.” Bucky shook his head. “You can’t. There is no way out. Can’t you see it?” He gestured to the frozen tundra before them. “Look.”

Steve did look. The icy wasteland stretched out before him was as bleak and hopeless a sight as any he’d ever seen. If they tried to walk out of there, they’d be swallowed by the snowdrifts within hours. And if by some miracle the exhaustion of slogging through the snow didn’t kill them, the freezing cold of nighttime certainly would.

“But I’m here with you.” He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head, and hugged Bucky tightly from behind. “We’ll find a way out together, or we’ll die together. But I’m not leaving you here alone.”

“You can’t be here. No one can be here.” Again Bucky shook his head. “No one is coming.”

Steve hugged Bucky tighter. He loved him so much it hurt, and any pain that Bucky went through hurt him a hundred times more. But seeing him like this - despondent and frightened and absolutely demoralized - hurt even worse.

“I came,” he whispered as he held Bucky close, trying to pass on some strength of will to him by physical contact alone. Or at least some comfort. “I’m here.”

“There, Soldier. Do you see? There is no way out.”

Steve whirled at the sound of another voice and saw a tall, thin man with dark hair flecked with threads of gray standing in the middle of the corridor. The immaculate tails of his long white coat fluttered in the icy wind as the door stood open, and the round lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses reflected the white of the snow outside. 

“Pushkin,” Steve snarled through gritted teeth, and flung himself at the doctor. 

If he could touch Bucky in this place, then maybe he could hurt Pushkin. He planted his feet and launched a single punch at the doctor, a punch whose force began at the balls of his feet and which would have split a sand-filled leather boxing bag wide open -

Pushkin didn’t even blink. Didn’t even register Steve’s presence as the punch passed harmlessly through him as if he’d been made of smoke. Steve stumbled, and Pushkin took a step towards Bucky.

“Come now,” he offered with a patronizing smile. “Let’s leave this foolishness behind us, shall we? There is no way out, and no one is coming for you.” He laid a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, and Steve cried out in agonized rage. 

Bucky didn’t look at Steve at all. His terrified gaze was focused solely on Pushkin.

“Do you understand?” Pushkin asked, slowly and deliberately. “No one is coming.”

“No.” Steve saw red in that moment. His jaw clenched, his hands curled into fists all of their own accord, and he lunged forward again. But this time he didn’t lunge for Pushkin.

“Come on!” he cried, seizing Bucky by the collar and arm and dragging him along as he ran for all he was worth. Not out the door into the snow, but back along the tiled hallway. Back in the direction he’d come from. Back towards Natasha and Jean.

“I’ve lost you enough times, Buck.” He shook his head, his legs pumping as the hallway flew by. “I’m not going to lose you again.”

They rounded a corner and stumbled to an abrupt stop. 

Bucky sat up in a bed, clad in the same clean, simple pajamas. The surrounding room was a stark, antiseptic white - clearly a hospital room - with one darkened window in the far wall.

No, not a window. A two-way mirror.

Karpov stood in front of the bed, dressed in his General’s finery, his hands clasped behind his back and his feet planted in parade rest. And Steve, his blood already boiling from attempting to confront Pushkin only a moment ago, felt the adrenaline surge in his veins again.

“But I still… I still think…” Bucky was in the middle of saying to Karpov, a pained and confused expression on his face. “I think everyone’s got it all wrong.”

“Wrong?” One of Karpov’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Soldier, we’ve been over this several times. You were lucky to have survived your accident. You lost your arm and your memory, yes, but you didn’t lose your life.”

Bucky frowned and picked at a loose thread in the blanket. “The doctors said my memories should come back.”

“With time and therapy, yes.” Karpov nodded, his feet shoulder-width apart and never budging. “Your memory will return. But most importantly of all, you’re back where you belong.” A small smile appeared to flit across Karpov’s face for the briefest instant. “You’re back home.” 

“Yeah, that’s… that’s just aces, I guess.” Bucky seemed so lost and helpless, and Steve wanted so badly to reach out for him. “But I… I don’t even speak Russian. I think someone got it wrong somehow.”

They were speaking English, Steve realized with a jolt. And Bucky sounded so much like his old self, it was painful to hear. He was even using his old Brooklyn slang, which - judging from the look that passed over the man’s face - Karpov didn’t like at all.

Well, that was just too fucking bad, wasn’t it?

“Look at yourself, Buck.” Steve gripped Bucky’s shoulder and gestured at the memory-figures of Karpov and Bucky. “Look what he’s doing to you. You’re trying to remember, and he’s lying to you.”

“But why?” Bucky looked from the memory-figure on the bed to Steve, eyes wide. “Why would he lie? Why would any of them lie?”

“Because he hates America.” Steve ground his teeth in fury as he watched Karpov spin his lies. “Because he wants you for his project. Because he wants to turn you against everything you ever loved and fought for. Because he wants to use you as an assassin, to make the world into what he wants it to be by wiping out everybody who doesn’t want the same thing.” 

He clutched Bucky’s shoulder, shaking his head and wishing he could just take Bucky away from this horrible place. “Because he’s a monster.”

Bucky backed up a step. “Let’s get out of here.”

Steve’s heart gave a hopeful little leap in his chest, and he didn’t waste one more second. He turned and ran, pulling Bucky along with him, barreling through the hallways at random until they ran smack into another tableau.

Bucky stood in a large tiled room with a single door. The room was dominated by a large bank of computer equipment, thick cables snaking from it all and leading to various places on what looked like a hellish version of a dentist’s chair. And Steve realized with sickened horror that he was looking at an early version of the mental recalibration chair.

“It’s something the medical technicians in Department X have been working on for some time,” Dr. Pushkin was saying to Bucky. “A mental recalibration machine, to help patients suffering from your exact condition. It should help to speed up your amnesia recovery, and perhaps bring back some of your memories altogether.”

Bucky - still clad in pajamas, though they were clean and pressed - looked decidedly unconvinced, though he didn’t say anything.

“The test results have been very promising,” Pushkin went on in that infuriatingly detached and clinical way he seemed to have when talking about things that would turn any remotely compassionate man’s stomach inside out. “It should help you reacquire your grasp of Russian, at the very least.”

Bucky looked from Pushkin to the chair to the other doctors waiting silently in the room, clipboards at the ready. “I’d rather… I’d rather just wait.”

“I’m afraid waiting is out of the question,” replied Pushkin, clasping his hands behind his back and looking at Bucky over the tops of his glasses. “In fact, the longer we wait, the more difficulty the recovery process is likely to be.” He raised an eyebrow. “Surely you don’t want this to be any more unpleasant than it has to be.”

Pushkin glanced at the technicians flanking Bucky and gave an almost imperceptible nod, at which the techs came forward and took Bucky by the elbows. Not forcefully - they must have known they didn’t have a prayer of overpowering him - but insistently. Enough so that Bucky followed their lead and took a hesitant couple of steps towards the chair.

The Bucky standing next to Steve turned away, his face crumpling in anguish. “I don’t want to see this. Whatever it is, it’s not good.”

“I don’t think I can take you away from here.” 

Steve felt his heart sink as he came to that realization. This Bucky - the Bucky from the memory block - wasn’t bound by the same rules as the real Bucky. He couldn’t just escape to the beach at Coney Island whenever the memories got too much for him to handle. 

_No way out,_ he’d said. And he’d been more right than he knew.

The technicians had strapped Bucky into the chair - manually, Steve noticed; this early version of the chair was a lot less automated than its modern counterpart - and now the awful machine was warming up. Steve wanted desperately to look away as the doctors came forward to lower the electrode-lined halo over Bucky’s head, but he couldn’t. All he could do was clench his jaw and try not to cry out as the first screams tore out of Bucky’s throat.

Next to him, Bucky cringed and squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t want to be here,” he muttered over his counterpart’s awful screams. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Around them, the room seemed to swim in and out of focus before mercifully fading to black.

[“There now.”] Pushkin’s voice seemed to ooze out of the darkness. Steve could tell that the doctor was speaking Russian, though he couldn’t have explained how he knew that any more than he could have explained how he was able to understand the man’s words. [“How do you feel, Soldier?”]

[“Tired,”] Bucky replied, voice heavy with exhaustion.

The scene shimmered into view. Bucky was crumpled in bed, back in the antiseptic room with the two-way mirror. Pushkin stood to the side of the bed, ever-present clipboard in hand and a few attendants waiting to the side.

[“You’re probably hungry,”] the doctor continued, jotting down notes somewhat detachedly. [“What would you like to eat?”]

[“I don’t… I don’t know.”] Bucky said the words slowly, deliberately pronouncing each syllable with careful precision. [“The soup is not bad. The red one. With the beets.”] He frowned. [“I don’t know the word.”]

“ _Borscht,_ ” replied Pushkin, lowering the clipboard and smiling down at Bucky. [“And did you realize you were speaking Russian?”]

Bucky was silent for a long moment, then, “No… No, I-”

[“Speak Russian, Soldier.”] Pushkin sounded like a stern parent admonishing a wayward child.

Bucky licked his lips. Tried again. [“No. No, I didn’t realize that.”]

[“Excellent.”] The doctor’s smile widened, his obvious pleasure like a barbed knife in Steve’s gut. [“And after only one session. Do you realize how much progress you’ve made, Soldier? You should be proud of yourself.”]

An exhausted, yet triumphant smile spread over Bucky’s face, and Steve ground his teeth in frustrated rage. The file had laid it all out - how Pushkin and Karpov had conned Bucky, how they’d stolen his memories and written new ones in their place - but reading it was one thing. Seeing it was another.

“You’re lucky you’re dead, asshole,” he snarled through his clenched teeth, his body quivering with furious anger. “And I hope you burn forever.”

Next to him, Bucky folded his arms and stared at the floor. “They’re not dead. I know they’re not dead.”

“I wish to God they weren’t.” Steve’s fingernails dug into his palms. “Believe you me.”

The scene shifted then, and it was almost like stepping into a carnival funhouse. Except the twisted images that flashed around them weren’t the product of bent mirrors or trick lighting. They were Bucky’s memories - the horrors that the fake memories Jean had found had been intended to replace.

Bucky screamed and cowered in a corner as the walls melted. He lashed out frantically at towering, menacing assailants who seemed to absorb his blows and keep on coming. He wrapped his arms around his head and curled in on himself as the ground around him fell away and left him imprisoned at the top of an impossibly high spire of rock, which vanished and sent him hurtling down through an impossibly deep abyss. Over the next thirty seconds or so, Steve was treated to some of the most ghastly and disturbing imagery he’d ever been privy to.

And through all of it, Pushkin loomed overhead or at the periphery, making notes on that damned clipboard. 

He’d orchestrated the whole thing, Steve thought angrily. Tortured Bucky into compliance with drugs and hallucinations, forced him to confront terrifying scenarios over and over again until nothing could frighten him anymore, and sent him to the chair every time to erase his memories of it. 

“They tore you apart and made you into what they wanted.” Steve reached out for Bucky’s hand and grasped it as tightly as he dared. “Don’t you see? They did this to you. And for what?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky pulled out of Steve’s grasp and backed away, eyes wide with terror. “I don’t know why. They didn’t tell me why.”

“No, they wouldn’t have.” Steve shook his head angrily and nearly spat in disgust. “All they wanted you to know was how to kill the people they wanted you to kill. How to hate who they wanted you to hate.” The rage rose in his chest, burning and swelling. “They made you hate your own country. Your own best friend. And they made you love them, even after everything they did to hurt you.”

“But nobody came…” 

Bucky’s voice, soft and scared, blew away on the cold Siberian wind. They were standing at the doorway to the tundra once again, staring out at the endless expanse of snow and ice.

“I ran away, but if I ran any further, I would’ve frozen to death.” Bucky folded his arms over his thin bathrobe, hugging himself. “And nobody came. I couldn’t do anything but go back to them.”

“Oh, Bucky.” 

Steve’s heart gave an awful wrench in his chest, as though someone had reached in there and squeezed it in a spiked fist. All the guilt came flooding back, and for a moment, he felt as though he were in that bombed-out pub in England again. Drinking glass after glass of whatever he could find, trying to drink away the pain and realizing he couldn’t even dull it slightly. That he would be forced to feel it in all its sharp-edged clarity, and that there was no escape from it.

No way out.

“I didn’t know,” he choked out past the lump in his throat. “I watched you fall. I thought you were dead. We all thought you were dead. If I’d known… if I’d even suspected…” He shook his head, his eyes stinging. “I’m sorry, Buck. God, I am so sorry. But I’m here now.” He reached out desperately for Bucky, his hands finding Bucky’s shoulders and clutching them like a drowning man might clutch a life preserver. “I’m here now, and I swear on everything I ever believed in, I’m going to get you out of here.”

Bucky didn’t turn to face Steve, instead leaning his head against the vulcanized rubber door frame. “But I went back to them,” he whispered. “I ran away, and then I went back to them anyway. I should’ve…” He swallowed loudly, eyes focused hard on the tundra. “I should’ve kept going. Understand? I should’ve kept going.”

“You would’ve died.” Steve felt his voice catch on the lump in his throat and grow ragged. “You would’ve died out there in the snow, alone, and I never would’ve found you again.” 

“Better that way. Don’t you see?” Bucky’s voice caught in his throat and again he swallowed loudly. “Don’t you understand? It would’ve been better that way.”

“Better? No...” Steve recoiled from the thought in horror. He let go of Bucky’s shoulders and wrapped his arms around Bucky from behind, burying his head in Bucky’s right shoulder. “It took me a lifetime to find you, but I did. I couldn’t have done it if you’d kept on going, and now I can finally bring you home.”

Bucky said nothing, but his shoulders shook in the silence.

“Let me take you home, Buck,” Steve whispered into Bucky’s shoulder. “Let me show you the way out.”

The scene melted away suddenly. Steve stood on the beach at Coney Island, the setting sun bleeding red and gold into the low tide. Bucky - his Bucky, with his long hair and his green Henley t-shirt - stood there, eyes stricken with shock. Next him stood Natasha, and at a polite distance was Jean.

“I think I’d like to go home now,” Bucky said quietly. “I think I’d like to go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey ho, let's go, let's get back into the writing flow.
> 
> So the past couple of months have kicked my ass, both in real life and in the enormous time commitment that was writing two Captain America Reverse Big Bang fics. I ambitiously imagined I could keep up anyway, but LOL. Anyway, I'm back, I have chapters ready and romance and recovery narratives to complete.
> 
> As always, let me know what you think!


	35. Samovars and Bubble Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Before Bucky could reconsider his actions, he pulled out his SIG-Sauer pistol and held it to the back of the doctor’s head._
> 
> _[“Go ahead, Doctor,”] he said quietly. [“Tell me why I shouldn’t.”]_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If they're speaking ["like this,"] then they're speaking Russian.

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**that evening**

Bucky didn’t say a word on the ride home, and thankfully, Steve (for once) didn’t feel the need to try to make conversation. Of course Natasha knew better than to try, and so the ride back to Red Hook was made in silence. 

Once they were home, Steve said something about ordering a few pizzas. Maybe Steve and Natasha had a discussion about it, but Bucky didn’t stick around to find out.

He stood under the spray of the shower for a long time.

Afterward, he decided he wasn’t hungry (not for pizza, not for anything), and wasn’t particularly in the mood to hear any comments about his newly-discovered lack of appetite. He pulled on a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, crawled into bed, and pulled the blanket over his head.

He remembered his time in the hospital in jagged, bloody shards.

They had kept him there for at least six months. Maybe longer, but who knew (he’d never know) how long they had kept him there unconscious? They could have done anything they wanted to him during that time.

 _Could_ have?

They _did_. Of course they did.

Comrade General Karpov (the old man - when had he started to think of him that way?) had told him he had been in a terrible accident and that he was in the hospital to recover before they made him field ready again.

He remembered - in broken, confused pieces - the drugs and the terrifying hallucinations, the stilted conversations and the patriotic Soviet music that filtered through speakers in every wall. 

He remembered - in horrific clarity - the images of American savagery, of their mindless violence and barbarism. He hated them, he _hated_ them, they had _made_ him hate them.

He remembered - he didn’t want to remember - being dragged kicking and screaming to the chair, over and over again, until he learned to accept it, until he stopped fighting, until he went to it willingly again and again and again.

They had _made_ him willing.

And after six months, when his Muscovite accent was flawless, when he accepted that the half-remembered fragments of a name (James - he had only ever had that much) were nothing more than a cover, when he was ready and eager to leave the hospital, they sent him to a training camp.

He learned (relearned? He wasn’t sure about that much) how to kill people with stunning, brutal efficiency, and after twelve months of that, they pronounced him field ready.

And he had been so fucking _proud_ of that moment.

He was relieved when the following three days were taken up by exhausting mission after exhausting mission. That gave him something to focus on - and a way to keep the focus off him.

“Hey Buck?” Steve asked while they were hunkered down against the side of a building in Villa de Leyva, Colombia. “You can’t keep everything to yourself, you know. You should talk to me.”

“What do you want me to say, Steve?” Bucky slammed a new magazine into his MP5SD. “We’re kinda busy here.”

In the middle of a firefight in the Brazilian resort town of São Sebastião, Steve turned to him as he covered them both with the shield. “Look, holding it all in isn’t good for you. Dr. Levitt would say the same thing if he was here.”

“Well, Dr. Levitt’s not here!” Bucky shouted, before hurling himself headlong into their attackers. “But I’ll make sure to bring it up to him this week!”

Finally, in Ecuador’s mountainous Otavalo, Bucky pushed Steve down as a hail of bullets passed narrowly over their heads. “Bucky, please,” Steve mumbled into the dirt. “If you can’t talk to me about it, who can you talk to?”

When it was all over and they were sitting against a wall, waiting for extraction and catching their collective breath, Bucky said:

“What’s there even to talk about?” He decided to pick the dirt out from under his fingernails with the tip of his Mark II blade. “What do you want me to say?”

“What do you mean, what is there to talk about?” Steve frowned as he wiped the dirt off his face with his gloved hand. “Karpov? Pushkin? Everything they did to you that you didn’t know about until just a couple of days ago? Come on, Buck.”

“So now I know.” Bucky focused on cleaning his fingernails. “So what?”

“What do you mean, so what?” Steve seemed completely bewildered. “Bucky, that’s proof of everything I’ve been saying all along! That it wasn’t just HYDRA, it was the Russians from the beginning! Doesn’t that strike you as important enough to talk about?”

“But we knew that.” Abruptly Bucky twirled the knife back into its holster. “Now we just know the details. Doesn’t really change anything, does it?”

“Oh, come on, Buck.” Steve looked at him with a give-me-a-break expression on his face. “You know it changes things. I _know_ you know it changes things. So what’s the point of avoiding talking about it?”

Bucky let his gaze drift into the sky, willing the damn Quinjet to arrive for extraction already. “I’m not avoiding anything, Steve. I just don’t have anything to say.”

“Except you and I both know that isn’t true.” Steve slid an arm around Bucky’s shoulders and gave him a gentle squeeze. “You haven’t stopped thinking about it. Neither have I. Maybe you just don’t know how to talk about it, but you’ve got plenty to say. All you have to do is let it out.”

Bucky was considering _letting it out_ in more ways than one, when Natasha’s voice broke in over their earpieces:

“You ready to go somewhere, boys? Because it sounds like your conversation is going nowhere.”

“Nope, it’s not.” Abruptly Bucky stood up, just in time to watch the Quinjet descend from the sky. He didn’t look at Steve.

He could feel Steve’s eyes on his back all the same.

\---

Two days later, he sat in Dr. Levitt’s office, sucking on his third peppermint and staring determinedly at the floor.

“It’s perfectly natural to feel overwhelmed by this kind of revelation,” the old man was saying as he massaged his knuckles absently while keeping his eyes on Bucky. 

“I’m not overwhelmed,” Bucky mumbled, twisting the candy wrapper between his fingers. 

“Just as it’s perfectly natural to not know how to feel about it,” Dr. Levitt continued without missing a beat, a small smile appearing on his face. “But talking about it will definitely help.”

“Yeah, Steve said the same thing.” Bucky smirked. “When his face was in the dirt.”

“Were you the one who put it there?” The smile lines around Dr. Levitt’s eyes deepened.

“Yes.” After a moment, Bucky added, “It was either that or let him get shot repeatedly.”

“Interesting,” Dr. Levitt murmured. “Why would he bring something like that up while the two of you were in such a dangerous situation?”

Bucky snorted. “That’s what he does. Or he’ll bring it up over breakfast or while jogging or… other times.”

He had brought it up in bed the other night. Bucky had wanted to kick him. Natasha had ordered Steve to put his mouth to better uses instead.

“That’s just what he’s like,” Bucky continued. “But I don’t need to talk about it. There’s nothing to say.”

“Isn’t there?” Dr. Levitt raised an eyebrow. “From what I’ve gathered, it seems like you’ve uncovered a very great betrayal.”

Bucky intended to say nothing to that stupidity. Instead what came out was, “What do you know?”

“That a betrayal so deep and complete would naturally cause you to guard against another.” Dr. Levitt didn’t move as he spoke. “And that keeping your feelings to yourself, whatever they may be, isn’t going to help you recover.”

Bucky bit down hard on his tongue and stared at the floor. 

“You have something invaluable to any survivor,” Dr. Levitt went on gently. “You have a very close, very dedicated, and very involved support network, every one of whom cares about you a great deal.” He smiled slightly. “Make use of that.”

“There’s nothing to say.” Bucky breathed hard through his nose. “They’re all dead. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“You’re not dead.” Dr. Levitt tilted his head slightly forward. “And their marks, their imprints are left on you like scars. Until we can heal them, that is.”

Bucky said nothing. He had nothing left to say.

Not to that particular doctor anyway.

\---

The doctor wasn’t hard to find at all.

After all, the General had only been too eager to tell him that the doctor had deserted HYDRA and sought shelter with SHIELD. He even invited him to go to Avengers Tower and find the doctor himself. 

Find him and kill him.

Bucky hadn’t yet told Steve or Natasha that he knew. He had meant to bring it up, but so many other things (most of them good, even) had happened lately, that it had fallen to the back of his mind. And honestly, he hadn’t been very willing to start that kind of conversation while laying naked and satiated in bed between them.

But he knew, and finding the doctor was as simple as going to Avengers Tower (which was SHIELD’s terra base these days anyway, so he had already been there a handful of times) and asking the voice in the elevator to bring him to “Doctor Dmitriy Stepanovich Rodchenko.”

He had never used the doctor’s name. Not once in all their acquaintance.

The doctor was preoccupied in a lab, clad in the familiar white coat Bucky had rarely seen him without. And though there was no recalibration chair in the room, something ugly and raw twisted in Bucky’s stomach anyway.

Before he could reconsider his actions, he pulled out his SIG-Sauer pistol and held it to the back of the doctor’s head.

[“Go ahead, Doctor,”] he said quietly. [“Tell me why I shouldn’t.”]

The doctor froze for a long moment, his hand halfway to his computer keyboard. But when he finally did move, he seemed to sag - to sigh in resignation with his entire body.

[“You know I can’t,”] he said without turning around. [“I’m surprised I’ve even lasted this long.”]

Bucky didn’t move the pistol. [“You chose to come here. Why?”]

[“There was nothing else for me to do.”] The doctor sighed again. [“I wanted at least to try to do some good with the last years of my life.“]

[“The General says that you betrayed HYDRA.”] A beat, then, [“And him.”]

[“The General...?”] The doctor tensed again, real fear creeping into his voice. [“You’ve spoken to him?”]

That sick, angry feeling spread from Bucky’s stomach into his chest and it took every bit of self-control not to squeeze the trigger right then and there.

Instead he said, [“Why wouldn’t I have?”]

But the doctor didn’t answer. Instead, he asked a strange question. [“How did you escape from him?”]

For the briefest of seconds, Bucky imagined kicking the stool out from under the doctor and watching him sprawl helpless and terrified on the floor.

He couldn’t seem to make himself do it. 

Yet.

Not when that question hung in the air between them. So he said, [“What makes you think I have?”]

[“If you hadn’t,”] the doctor replied with a slight tremor in his voice, [“I’d already be dead.”]

Another long moment passed, at the end of which the doctor let out a long shaky sigh and spoke again. 

[“Can I turn around?”] He hesitated briefly. [“I’d rather see you, if you don’t mind.”]

Again, Bucky’s stomach churned and his chest tightened. He could kill the doctor, and it would be all over. He wouldn’t even have to look at the man’s face.

Instead he lowered the pistol and took a step back. 

[“Go ahead.”]

The doctor rotated slowly in his chair, his hands coming to rest on his knees, and looked Bucky in the eyes. But he didn’t seem to be studying Bucky as he once had. Instead, he seemed to be just… taking in the sight of him.

[“You look well,”] he finally offered. [“Your friend the Captain tells me you’ve been improving.”] His eyes dropped. [“I was glad to hear it.”]

[“Improving.”] Bucky might’ve lowered the pistol, but he did nothing to conceal it. [“Why would you be glad to hear that?”]

[“Come now, Sol-”] The doctor stiffened and caught himself. [“I’m sorry. James.”] He sighed. [“Why would I be glad to hear anything else? I didn’t want you to suffer any longer.”]

_James._

Bucky didn’t even hear the rest of the doctor’s explanation over the sudden roaring in his ears. 

[“They said that name was just a cover. Comrade General Karpov said so himself.”] He looked at the doctor for a long moment. [“Did you always know?”]

[“Yes.”]

The doctor’s answer hung in the air. Nothing else needed to be said. The doctor didn’t even bother to try to defend himself.

And for some reason, that just made Bucky talk.

[“Everyone thinks I should open up and talk about this ‘great betrayal’ I’ve gone through,”] he said. [“That keeping it in isn’t good for me and that I need to process it properly.”] He regarded the doctor for a moment. [“But you tell me, Doctor, what would be the point? We both know it happened, and we both know why.”]

It was more talking than he usually ever did in one breath.

[“I can’t tell you what the point is,”] the doctor said. [“Nor even if there is one. I didn’t even think what I’d done to you could be undone, let alone what Dr. Pushkin had done to you beforehand, but I was wrong.”]

He took a breath before continuing. [“And yes, we both know what happened and why. But you were conditioned against ever coming to that realization, and who knows what contradictions that may cause to spring up in your mind?”] He raised an eyebrow. [“Tell me, when you think of Comrade General Karpov, what do you feel?”]

Bucky scowled. [“What kind of question is that?”]

[“I’m no expert on the mind. Perhaps I’m doing this wrong.”] The doctor scowled back. [“But I’m trying to make a point. Just answer me.”]

Bucky opened his mouth to tell him that of course he hated the old man, but the words stuck in his throat. Instead he fell into his old habit - too easily - of letting his gaze drift off to the side somewhere.

[“I don’t have an answer for you,”] he finally said. 

[“Is that because you truly don’t know?”] The doctor lifted an eyebrow. [“Or because the way you think you should feel based on what you now know isn’t the way you actually feel?”]

[“I don’t know what I feel,”] Bucky insisted. 

The conversation had gotten away from him somehow. Hadn’t he come to kill the doctor? 

Maybe?

[“Everyone always wants me to figure out what I feel,”] he continued, settling his gaze back on the doctor. He wasn’t really used to that, he realized. Wasn’t used to looking him in the eyes for any extended period.

He was so fucked up.

[“Why do I need to feel anything?”] he finished. [“Why can’t I just _be_?”]

[“Then what _are_ you?”] The doctor spread his hands. [“If you don’t know what you feel and you just want to _be_ , then tell me _what_ you want to be.”]

After a moment, Bucky said, [“I don’t know yet.”] That much was true anyway. [“I didn’t think I’d even get this far.”]

[“Yes, I know.”] The doctor sighed again. [“Neither did I.”]

The conversation had run so far away from Bucky, he didn’t know how to respond to that. So he just stood there, pistol in hand, waiting for the doctor to continue speaking like he always had.

[“But, as I said before, I’m glad.”] The doctor looked down at the pistol in Bucky’s hand, then pointedly back up into his eyes. [“I’m glad I was wrong about you.”]

The words came out before Bucky could stop them. [“That makes one of you.”] At the doctor’s raised eyebrow, he said, [“The General said as much.”]

The doctor clearly didn’t understand, and Bucky sighed. Tried again.

[“I was declared mentally incompetent by the court.”] It felt very strange to say the words aloud. [“And the General thinks that’s… fitting.”]

[“He would.”] The doctor’s face twisted into a glower, but then gradually returned to its normal tired state. [“I’m sure he finds the idea amusing.”] He shook his head. [“Again, I’m no expert on the mind, but I wouldn’t hesitate to brand him an absolute madman.”]

Bucky was pretty certain Steve had said the same thing at some point.

The doctor hesitated for a long moment before adding, [“He threatened to kill me once, you know. Towards the end, just before you were rescued.”] He reached up, eyes unfocused, and lightly touched his own throat. [“And I don’t doubt for a moment that he would have done it.”] 

[“Except that he still needed you,”] Bucky finished. 

[“Yes.”] The doctor’s eyes came back into focus. [“Just as he needed you. But look at how badly he treated you, and you were much less expendable than I was.”] 

Bucky was on the verge of telling the doctor that he was going to kill the General one day, when the door slid open suddenly and in walked Dr. McCoy.

“My perusals of obviously disused storerooms have borne fruit yet again.” He grinned and held up a large and very dusty samovar. “I thought we could clean it up and put it in the corner, and then we’d have fresh tea all… day…” He trailed off as he noticed the pistol, then raised a single blue eyebrow at Bucky. “Ah, so it’s that kind of a meeting, is it?”

Bucky looked between Dr. McCoy and the doctor, and for the briefest, stupidest of moments, wondered how his two worlds had collided together so spectacularly.

His gaze settled back onto the doctor. [“You know each other?”]

[“We work together.”] The doctor looked somewhat embarrassed, but his expression quickly turned to one of confusion. [“Wait. How do you know him?”]

Before Bucky was forced to come up with a reply, Dr. McCoy cut in, and Bucky had never been so grateful for the interruption.

[“This is like something out of a Neil Simon comedy.”] Dr. McCoy shook his head, looking for a place to put down the samovar. [“Or a Shakespearean comedy. Or any comedy, really. Would either of you mind clearing the table in the corner?”]

[“Wait.”] The doctor frowned. [“You speak Russian? Why have I been speaking to you in English all this time?”]

[“You needed the practice.”] Dr. McCoy shrugged and grinned. [“Articles tend to elude you.”]

Bucky licked his lips. [“I need to go now. I have a… a thing.”]

Smooth.

He tucked the pistol away, out of sight, and headed for the door. He and the doctor had never said proper goodbyes. No reason to start then.

“The table, please?” Dr. McCoy continued in English as Bucky left. “Our tea service awaits.”

The door slid shut behind Bucky and he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. 

\---

“We talked in circles,” Bucky took a pull on his lychee bubble tea, “and then Dr. McCoy showed up with a samovar and it got weird.”

“Showing up with a samovar is pretty weird,” Wanda agreed as she sipped her own dragonfruit bubble tea. “But do you feel any better now?”

They sat crammed into a small booth (well, Bucky was crammed. Wanda looked comfortable) in a brightly decorated snack shop down the street from Avengers Tower called ‘Move Oolong Here.’ 

“I don’t know.” Bucky selected a small square of coconut mochi cake from the plate of various flavored mochi cakes that sat on the table between. “I thought I went there to kill him. But maybe I didn’t.”

He shoved the cake square into his mouth and chewed. It tasted exactly like a fluffy piece of coconut mochi cake.

“I don’t know why I went there,” he finished, and reached for a green tea mochi cake.

“To look him in the eyes, maybe?” Wanda took another sip of her tea. She seemed content to nibble at the one piece of red bean mochi cake she’d selected and leave the rest to him. “Or to look for some answers that your memory walks couldn’t give you?”

“Supposedly I’ve suffered a great betrayal under Comrade General Karpov.” Bucky stared down at his bubble tea. “But I already knew they - he - did things to me. The memory walks just… showed it, I guess. And he’s dead. And so is Dr. Pushkin.”

“The people who nearly destroyed my country half a century ago are all dead.” Wanda shrugged. “The wounds they caused are still being healed.” She furrowed her brow thoughtfully. “‘The evil that men do lives after them’, or something like that.”

Bucky poked at the balls of tapioca in his drink. “They’re all dead, except for the General and the doctor.”

“You keep saying that.” Wanda stirred her own tea with a frown. “What difference does it make whether they’re dead or not? You are alive. It’s your life that matters, not theirs.”

Bucky shoved another mochi cake into his mouth. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out and scowled when he read the message on the screen.

**//Hey Buck. You coming home anytime soon? We still need to talk.//**

“Let me guess.” Wanda smirked as she took another nibble of her mochi. “That was Steve?”

Bucky looked up from the phone. “How’d you know?”

“The scowl, mostly.” Wanda sipped her tea. “You get that a lot when you read texts from him.”

“Well, he’s…” Bucky searched for an adequate explanation, but the best he could come up with was, “Steve.”

He bought a variety box of mochi cake to take home. The better to keep Steve occupied with.

\---

“Everyone’s dead and I’ve learned nothing.” Bucky shoved the variety box into Steve’s hands. “Have some mochi cake.”

“Everyone’s…” Steve’s eyes went wide suddenly. “Who’s dead?”

“Karpov and Pushkin.”

Bucky decided it was enough of an accomplishment that he hadn’t referred to either one of them as ‘comrade.’ 

“The General’s not dead yet. And,” he selected a square of strawberry mochi cake and enjoyed the look of bewilderment on Steve’s face as he fed it to him, “neither is the doctor.”

“We’ll get Lukin.” Steve spoke around the mochi, chewing madly as the bewilderment fled his face to be replaced by that patented look of Steve-ish determination. “I swear to you, Buck, we’ll get him. And as for the doctor…”

Bucky waited.

“Well, I know where he is.” Steve swallowed the mochi. “And I don’t think you ought to go looking to kill him.”

Bucky walked away, leaving Steve holding the box of mochi cake. “I know where he is, too.” He stood by the window, staring out at the bay. “In the Tower, drinking tea from a samovar with Dr. McCoy.”

“He - what?” Steve fumbled the box and just barely, awkwardly, caught it again. “How did you…” He rushed over to Bucky to put a hand on his shoulder. “You went to see him? You didn’t…”

“Kill him?” Bucky scowled. “Wouldn’t have you have heard about that by now?”

“Oh, thank God.” Steve set the box aside and put both arms around Bucky’s shoulders, sagging against him. “You would’ve regretted it, Buck, I promise you.” He turned Bucky to face him. “Did you talk to him?”

Bucky’s scowl deepened. “Obviously.” A beat, then, “Not about much though. It didn’t really… I don’t know…” He leaned against Steve, dipping his face into Steve’s neck and breathing in the scent of him. “It didn’t change much.”

“Then maybe you ought to talk to him again.” Steve brought his hand up to the back of Bucky’s neck. “If you want to. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where he was. In the beginning, I didn’t think you’d be able to stop yourself from killing him. And then…” He sighed. “Well, I guess I just didn’t know what the right time was.”

“I’ve known for a while,” Bucky murmured into Steve’s neck. “And there was never a right time to bring it up. But you wanted me to talk, and I didn’t know what to say, and I thought going there would… help me figure it out, I guess.” He sighed. “It didn’t.”

“Maybe it wasn’t the right time.” Steve hugged Bucky tighter, resting his chin on Bucky’s shoulder. “Or maybe neither of you knew what to say. Or maybe the answers you’re looking for just aren’t going to come from him no matter what.” He sighed. “I wish I knew what to tell you, Buck. But you can talk to me, and maybe we can figure things out together.”

“I brought cake,” Bucky murmured.

“I know,” Steve chuckled, and kissed Bucky suddenly on the cheek. “So, that’s good. We can snack while we talk.”

“Sure,” Bucky agreed easily.

He would definitely distract Steve in other ways while snacking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooboy, two chapters in one week! It's almost like I'm updating on the regular again.
> 
> Feedback is the stuff of life.


	36. Slice of Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You look much better now.” Steve’s frown melted away, to be replaced by a very warm and genuine smile. “You’ve really been making a lot of good progress lately, Buck. I don’t know if I’ve been giving you enough credit for that, but it’s true.”_
> 
> _Bucky looked at Steve over the rim of his orange juice glass. “I’ve definitely been making a lot of good progress in the bedroom,” he said before taking a large swig of juice._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, if they're ["speaking like this,"] they're speaking Russian.

**Prospect Heights, Brooklyn**  
**early August 2015**

The locally-sourced, cage-free wraps were fine. The fresh squeezed drinks were refreshing. The weather was pleasant enough, considering how hot the forecast had said it would be. But Steve barely registered any of that as he sat in his chair across from Sam at a curbside cafe called ‘My All Thyme Favorite’ that specialized in organic whole food from local farmers’ markets. 

Steve gulped at his watermelon juice, his hand coming away wet with condensation that he wiped on the back of his neck. “He keeps on telling us that everyone responsible for what happened to him is dead.”

“Well, he’s not wrong, is he?” Sam took a bite of his gigantic pulled Cuban chicken wrap. “Aside from Lukin and the scientist you picked up, they are all dead.”

“That’s the point.” Steve poked moodily at his own wrap. “He’s not wrong at all.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “And so this bothers you how, exactly?”

“Because it means they got away with it.” Steve’s voice and face both went stormy. “They died before anyone could make them pay for what they’d done to him.”

Sam took another bite of his wrap. “Lukin’s still out there. We’re working on making him pay.”

“Well, either we’re going to have to work pretty damn hard or else get pretty damn lucky.” Steve drank more of his juice. “But he’s really the only one left. Everyone else is dead, which means they’ll never see justice.” He shook his head angrily. “And I don’t know how to deal with that. I really don’t.”

“Why do you need to deal with it?” Sam took a long pull on his blueberry-avocado smoothie. “What’s there to deal with?”

“The fact that the people who stole Bucky’s life died happily and comfortably in their sleep,” Steve spat. “The fact that they did those horrible things to him and never felt even a fraction of it themselves.” 

He could hardly believe he was having this conversation, or that he had to spell out something so fundamental as the concept of justice. 

“How can you even ask me a question like that, Sam?”

Sam sat back in his chair and looked at Steve for a long moment. “And how’s Bucky taking it? Besides telling you that they’re all dead, I mean?”

“He doesn’t talk about it much at all, really.” Steve hunched over again, resting his head in his hands. “Mostly he changes the subject. I don’t think his mind’s strong enough yet to really handle thinking about all the ramifications of it.” He snorted derisively. “He still thinks of Karpov as ‘the old man’, for God’s sake. Like some kind of favorite uncle. I can’t stand it.”

“I can tell it’s really tearing you up,” Sam said levelly. 

“It is.” Steve closed his eyes, resting his forehead in the palms of his hands. He felt miserable. “I just want him back, Sam. I just want this all to be behind him, and it seems like the more steps forward we take, the longer the road gets.”

Sam was quiet for a moment, but when he spoke, his tone was not unkind. 

“That’s recovery for you. It’s never a clear, straight path. More like a bumpy, winding road with hills and valleys and sometimes frustrating detours that take you a much longer way than you had hoped.” He drummed his fingers against the table. “Not the greatest metaphor, but there you go.”

“I just…” Steve blew out a heavy sigh. “The people who did it to him should have been punished. Instead they got to live good long lives. People probably even thought of them as heroes. And that’s about as wrong as wrong gets.”

“It is wrong,” Sam agreed. “There’s no one at this table who doesn’t think it’s wrong, and it’s frustrating as hell.” A beat, then, “But you can’t change it. You can figure out how you want to move forward, but you can’t change what happened, as much as that frustrates you.”

“But that _is_ what frustrates me.” Steve looked up at Sam, his elbows still on the table. “The fact that I can’t do anything about it. That I can only try to help him move forward, and that justice - real justice - can’t ever happen for him.”

“I’m going to disagree with you there.” Sam took another giant bite of his chicken wrap and washed it down with a swig of smoothie. “Dude was arrested and nearly tried for a ridiculous number of crimes that weren’t his fault, and then he was released _to_ you, so you could look after him and make sure he’s happy and healthy.”

“That’s not justice,” Steve countered. “That’s just plain common decency.”

“And by all accounts,” Sam continued, “it seems to be working out pretty well for the both of you.” He shrugged and added, “The three of you, really.”

Steve couldn’t argue with that. 

Even if Bucky was still far short of complete recovery, even if he’d never see real justice done, and even if people would always know him as the Winter Soldier more than they knew him as the Howling Commandos’ Sergeant Bucky Barnes, Steve had to admit that things had been working out very well indeed between him and Bucky on a personal level. And even if Natasha didn’t want to move in with them just yet, things between the three of them seemed to have been working out nicely as well.

“I guess I just don’t know when to be satisfied,” was the best he could manage.

Sam offered him a crooked smile. “Well, no one’s going to argue with you there.”

“No,” Steve replied with a halfhearted smile of his own. “No, I guess they won’t.”

He’d been that way all his life. No matter how well things worked out, no matter how good life might have seemed, he’d always been able to think of ways it could be better. And on one hand, he supposed that was a good thing - after all, how could progress ever be made if no one ever pointed out where and how things could be improved? But on the other hand, it did make it very hard to be satisfied.

He wondered if he’d always feel that way about Bucky’s recovery. And that very thought made him queasy.

For a minute or two, they ate and drank in silence. Then, after Sam had drained off his smoothie and ordered another one, he sat back in his chair and regarded Steve for a moment. 

“Look, man,” he said. “It’s obvious to anyone who cares to look that all of this is weighing on you. You need to get it out, but you can’t really talk to Bucky about it, because he has to walk his own path to recovery. But it needs to come out, or it’s going to eat you alive.”

“What difference is talking about it going to make?” Steve pushed his barely-eaten wrap away and ran his hands through his hair. “Talking about it won’t bring them back to face their punishment. It won’t erase what they did to him. It won’t turn back the clock so I can save him from falling, or go down there after him instead of letting the train take me away.” He heaved a painful sigh. “It’ll just be me talking.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Bucky sings pretty much the same tune when he doesn’t want to go to therapy, huh?”

Steve’s mouth opened and closed a few times, but no sounds came out. Half a dozen replies came to mind, but their flaws were obvious enough that they never made it from his brain to his tongue. All he could do for a very long moment was sit there and gape.

And finally, he had to acknowledge the obviousness of what Sam was suggesting.

“So you think I need therapy too.”

Sam nodded once. “I think it could help.”

And the more Steve thought about it, the more it made sense. There were a lot of things that had happened to him that he’d never really gotten the opportunity to work through. Oh, Sharon had tried her best to help, and so had Natasha, and so had Sam, and every one of the other Avengers he’d been able to call a friend. But maybe Sam had a point. Maybe in order to be a real help to Bucky - to give him the best of everything like he so desperately deserved - Steve needed some help of his own.

“Okay,” he said, nodding his head slowly. “What do I do?”

\---  
**uptown Manhattan**  
**same afternoon**

“Why don’t we do this more often?”

Natasha asked the question from behind closed eyes, leaning back in her comfortable chair and breathing in the lavender-scented air of the place. The well-worn terry cloth of the bathrobe she wore scratched gently and pleasurably at her lotioned skin. Her feet were up on a poofy footstool, her drying toes separated by one of those specialized foam things used exclusively to keep freshly-painted toenails from touching anything around them. She’d been through a massage, a sauna, a mani-pedi, and a few other treatments she could barely recall.

“Because we don’t have the time for it.” Maria Hill’s voice came from the chair to her left. “I’m honestly surprised I haven’t gotten a priority call yet. Usually I can’t get through a day without at least two or three things that require my urgent attention.”

To the other side of Natasha, Sharon murmured, “I vote this a priority call that needs your urgent attention.”

On the other side of the room, Wanda hummed in contented, relaxed approval.

“You don’t get enough time off.” Carol Danvers spoke up from the chair to Maria’s left. “ _I_ don’t get enough time off. None of us do. We should, I don’t know, form a union or something.”

Natasha snorted. “I’m all for that. Who gets to bring it up to the boss?”

Sharon just barely stifled a snicker. “Clearly the one who’s sleeping with the boss.”

“So let it be written,” Maria tapped her hand against the armrest, “so let it be done.”

“You outrank me, Maria.” Natasha lazily opened her left eye and arched its eyebrow. “It’s not like I’ve slept my way to the top or anything.”

“I tried.” Carol raised a hand and smirked. “But sleeping with the deputy director hasn’t gotten me a promotion yet.”

“Yet,” Wanda added without bothering to open her eyes.

Maria’s lips curved into a satisfied smile.

“Anyway.” Natasha opened her other eye and looked around at the others. “More days off clearly aren’t happening, but maybe we can talk about adding spa visits to our benefits package?” She chuckled. “It’s obvious we all need them.”

“Why isn’t there a spa room in the Tower?” Sharon frowned thoughtfully. “It has everything else. There should be a spa room.”

“And a Starbucks,” Wanda said, and off Maria’s raised eyebrow, she shrugged. “I like their fancy coffees.”

“James likes them too.” Natasha smirked over at Wanda. “He likes walking with you. It’s his chance to snack his way around the city.”

“Oh yes.” Wanda sighed in relaxation. “We’re biffs now.”

Maria looked at her. “Biffs?”

Natasha laughed. Wanda had to have meant ‘BFFs’, but was trying to pronounce the acronym as if it were a word. “Is that like pronouncing ‘LOL’ as ‘lull’?”

Carol snorted. “It’s ‘lulz’. Or ‘lawl.’”

“Oh my God.” Sharon looked at each of them in turn. “We’re going to have this conversation?”

“She started it.” Natasha gestured to Wanda. “Besides, it’s funny. How often do we get to have conversations that don’t revolve around work?”

“ _Let’s talk about sex, ba-by, let’s talk about you and me_ ,” Carol sang, waving her hands over her head. “ _Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be._ ”

“Somebody make her stop,” Maria warned.

Carol ignored her. “ _Let’s talk abooouuut sex! Let’s talk about sex!_ ”

“Does she do this a lot?” Sharon asked, her expression one of mingled amusement and bewilderment.

“I don’t know this song,” Wanda said, and abruptly Carol stopped singing and glared at her.

“Salt-N-Pepa?”

Wanda shook her head.

Carol’s eyes widened. “From the _Blacks’ Magic_ album?”

Another shake of the head.

Carol sucked in a breath. “Released in nineteen-freakin’-ninety?” 

Wanda raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t even born in nineteen-freakin’-ninety.”

“Oh my God.” Carol slumped into her seat. “Good Lord, kid, you’re killing me.”

“Stop it,” Natasha managed to hiccup out between her bouts of laughter. She’d often been told she had a bizarre sense of humor, but she didn’t often laugh this hard. “My ribs hurt.”

“My brain hurts,” offered Maria, reaching out to pat Carol’s shoulder affectionately. “But if it helps, I’m pretty sure she’s the only one who’s too young to know the song.”

“Which is, by the way, bullshit that will not stand.” Carol shook her finger at Wanda. “You hear me? This bullshit will not stand. You need to be learned in the ways of music, young Padawan.”

Maria rolled her eyes. “You’re such a nerd.”

“Nah,” Sharon offered, a smirk of her own lighting up her face. “She’s not bookish enough to be a nerd. She’s more of a dork. Possibly a geek.”

“A geek,” Natasha snorted, trying hard not to giggle. “Definitely a geek.”

Carol shaped her fingers into a ‘W.’ “Whatever.” She made an ‘L’ and held it against her forehead. “Losers.”

“Oh my God,” Maria said flatly. “I’m taking that home with me tonight.”

“Buy the ticket, take the ride,” Sharon offered.

“You love the ride.” Carol gave Maria a look that was partially a smolder and partially a glare. 

“Good night, everybody!” Sharon waved at the group and then hid her face behind her hand.

“We really need to do this more often.” Natasha tried to catch her breath, but the laughter just didn’t want to stop. She’d been so inundated by testosterone lately that it was a breath of fresh air to be surrounded by her girlfriends for an afternoon. Maybe more like a huge gust of fresh air, now that she thought of it. “I think we all need it.”

“I like this,” Wanda agreed. “This pampering. It’s nice.”

“It’s a real treat.” Sharon sighed and sank deeper into her chair. “I wish I could indulge more often, but who has the time?”

“Not me, that’s for certain.” Maria leaned her head back and puffed air at the ceiling. “I’m pretty much running SHIELD now.”

“Not me either,” offered Carol. “I’m either out in the field or shining a desk chair with my ass, and I’d rather be in the field any day.”

Sharon scowled. “There’s an image. So sexy.” She shot a look at Maria. “Gosh, Maria, how do you stand it?”

“Who do you think tells her to shine things with her ass?” Maria lifted an eyebrow at Sharon. “It’s great having authority.”

Sharon’s scowl melted into a smile. “It’s good to be the queen.”

Maria nodded. “Damn straight.”

“No kidding.” Natasha smiled as well. Not only was it wonderful to spend time with the girls - however occasionally - but it was nice to be reminded that she had her own authority. And she had an imagination to go along with it. “I’m going to have to do some queening of my own.”

\---

**Brooklyn Campus of the Veterans Affairs Harbor Healthcare System**  
**same afternoon**

Bucky sat in the ugly green office of Darien Nash, turning his shiny new veterans’ health identification card over in his hands. 

The left side of the card named him as ‘James B. Barnes,’ and the right featured a photo of him that looked “just as good as any mugshot,” according to Nash, who had handed him the card with a grin. 

“I’ve been coming here since April.” Bucky frowned. “Why am I only getting this now?”

“Because that’s as fast as V.A. bureaucracy moves.” Nash shrugged, his amiable smile never leaving his face. “You don’t want to know how long some vets wait.”

“But, what?” Bucky scowled. “I’m a special case?”

“I’d say so, yeah.” Nash nodded. “You and Captain Rogers both. Pretty sure the two of you’re the only documented cases of vets coming back seventy years after being declared KIA.”

Underneath his picture, the words ‘Medal of Honor’, ‘Purple Heart,’ and ‘Former POW’ were printed in a neat vertical row, and Bucky’s scowl deepened. 

“Why a Purple Heart?”

“For being killed in action.” Nash smiled. “Not every day you get to meet somebody with that distinction, I’ll tell you.”

“And the Medal of Honor?”

“Because what you and the rest of the Howling Commandos did during the war pretty much redefined the concept of heroism.” Nash sat back in his chair. “I don’t think anybody ever managed to put a number on how many lives you saved. The Army doesn’t just hand those things out. Trust me, you earned it.”

Bucky didn’t know how to reply to that. He sat in silence for a moment, then, “And ‘former POW’?” He licked his lips. “Why is that relevant?” 

“POWs are never irrelevant.” Nash’s smile faded. “They’re often the ones who suffer the most, and the ones a lot of people never think about. And in your case, being the longest-serving POW, I’d say it matters most of all.”

“Longest serving?” Bucky went back to staring at the card in his hands. “Who decided that?”

“Wasn’t that what your lawyer said?” Nash’s eyebrows knit. “Seventy-odd years is longer than any POW I’ve ever heard of, anyway. I think there was a guy who was held in Vietnam for nine or ten years, but that’s your only competition.”

“I don’t know what my lawyer said. I only met her a few times.”

He didn’t remember the meetings very well either. It felt like a long time ago, even though it had only been a handful of months. But he had never been very good at keeping track of time.

“And I wasn’t a POW for _seventy_ years. That’s…” He licked his lips again. “That’s very…”

He didn’t know what to say.

“Your stretch in the HYDRA camp after the Battle of Azzano would’ve qualified you for POW status even if nothing had happened after.” Nash leaned forward. “But you spent the whole time from 1945 until just a few months ago in enemy custody. They tortured you, rewired your head, made it so you didn’t even know you were a prisoner. And that ought to make it obvious.”

Bucky said nothing.

He suspected Nash wasn’t wrong though. The memory walks had revealed as much, hadn’t they? 

That didn’t mean he had to talk about it though.

“So does this qualify me for discounts at IHOP?”

“Funny you should mention that.” Nash grinned and opened a drawer in his desk, rummaging around until he came up with another card. He placed it on the desk. “In the course of filling out all the rest of your paperwork, you got automatically registered with the AARP - the American Association for Retired Persons, which serves people over fifty years of age. Now that’s where the real discounts’ll come from.”

Bucky took the bright red card; aside from AARP printed in bold letters, along with his name and membership number, the card lacked any other identifying information.

“So this will get me the IHOP discount?” He flipped the card over; nothing but a magnetic strip and some phone numbers on the back. “How about at picture houses?”

“I think the rule is if you’re old enough to still call them picture houses, they have to let you in for free.” Nash chuckled. “Seriously, though, the discount applies to lots of stuff. Just look it up online.” He indicated the card. “Isn’t there a website listed there?”

Bucky glanced at the back of the card again, and yes, there was a website listed. “If I’m old enough to still call them picture houses, then I’m old enough to have missed the website listing the first time.”

Nash laughed out loud. “Good one.” He shook his head, still laughing, and held out his hand for Bucky to shake. “So go on out there, old-timer, and see what you can save money on.”

\---

**Manhattan**  
**early evening**

Steve had come home shortly after Bucky and suggested they go to the Tower to work out. SHIELD had a state of the art gym, after all, which was much better than the boxing gym down the street that Steve occasionally dragged him to.

They took the bike into Manhattan and spent a few hours kicking around the gym. Afterward, they showered (not in a sexy way, though Bucky wouldn’t have minded that) and as they were toweling off in the locker room, Bucky asked:

“You hungry? Want to go to IHOP?”

“You’re always hungry.” Steve chuckled and flicked his towel at him. “But yeah, I could eat.”

Perfect.

Bucky got a triple order of the strawberry and orange topped cream cheese crepe (because who was going to fill up on _one_ lousy crepe?), Steve ordered a steak-and-eggs platter along with a short stack of pancakes, and between them they shared a platter of bacon and sausage.

Bucky tossed his veterans’ health identification card on the table. “Look what I have now.”

“Oh, hey!” Steve swallowed his mouthful of coffee and smiled. “Look at you, all official and everything.” He reached over and picked the card up, grinning as he did. “Nice picture.”

Bucky snorted. “Social worker said it looked ‘just as good as any mugshot.’”

“Nah.” Steve chuckled. “Your mugshot was way worse. You were making this horrible blank face. At least here you’ve got a nice little scowl going.”

“Was I?” Bucky crammed a large slice of crepe into his mouth. “I don’t remember. I don’t know if I’ve even seen it.”

“You don’t want to.” Steve speared a large piece of steak on his fork and ate it in one bite. “Or maybe you do, I don’t know. I don’t much like it though.” He frowned. “You looked pretty bad. You were still in rough shape, and it showed.” 

Bucky didn’t know what to say to that, so he spent a moment or two focusing on the crepes and bacon. 

“You look much better now.” Steve’s frown melted away, to be replaced by a very warm and genuine smile. “You’ve really been making a lot of good progress lately, Buck. I don’t know if I’ve been giving you enough credit for that, but it’s true.”

Bucky looked at Steve over the rim of his orange juice glass. “I’ve definitely been making a lot of good progress in the bedroom,” he said before taking a large swig of juice.

Steve snorted. “You’re such a jerk,” he said past a mouthful of pancakes, and he spent a moment chuckling and shaking his head. “This is true, though. You’ve definitely gotten better at certain things.”

“Oh yeah?” Bucky set the glass aside and leaned forward slightly. “Which things?”

“Relaxing at key moments, for one thing.” Steve smirked. “And not whacking me over the head when I wake you up at three in the morning; that’s always a bonus.”

“I like when you wake me up at three in the morning,” Bucky murmured. A beat, then, “Mostly.”

Natasha had spent the night with them a few days ago, and when Steve tried to wake her up at three in the morning, citing a raging libido (after a whole evening of fun), she had roundly told him to fuck off. And so Steve woke Bucky up instead, and they had quiet, sleepy sex while Natasha watched with a pleased smile on her face.

It had been nice.

“Except for the fact that the other night, you didn’t care where you stuck it, you just wanted to stick it.” Bucky shook his head. “I feel so used.”

“Not yet, you don’t.” Steve smirked and reached across the table to stroke Bucky’s hand. “Just wait till we get back home.”

The waiter appeared in front of the table, a ridiculously eager smile on his face. “More coffee, Captain America, sir?”

“Oh.” Steve gave a start and - did he actually blush? “Yeah. Sure.” He held out his cup while the waiter poured, and as the young man walked away, Steve picked up Bucky’s V.A. card again.

“I should probably get one of those”, he said, frowning thoughtfully. “I get all my healthcare stuff through SHIELD, but it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to register with the V.A. too. Just in case.”

Bucky drained off his orange juice. “Just in case of what?”

“I don’t know.” Steve shrugged, helping himself to a bacon strip. “Just in case. I can’t think of every eventuality, but it’s never a bad thing to have options.”

“Okay.” Bucky frowned. “If you say so.”

Steve looked very determinedly at his plate for a long moment, shoveling in mouthful after mouthful of food, before finally heaving a sigh and looking up.

“I’ve been talking to Sam,” he said. “He thinks I should start going to some therapy sessions of my own.” He fiddled with his fork. “And… I think he’s probably right.”

Bucky looked at Steve for a long moment. And then he smirked. “Good. Now I can be the one to kick you out of bed in the morning, when all you want to do is find a warm place to stick it, because you have to go to therapy.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to try to skip out on my therapy, Bucky.” He speared a sausage on his fork and pointed with it. “You’re the one who always tries to weasel out, not me. What makes you think it’s going to be any different from here on out?”

Bucky couldn’t wipe the smirk on his face. “Because you’ll suddenly realize you _have_ to get out of bed. You _have_ to go to therapy. You can’t just stay home and fuck the day away.”

He was enjoying himself far too much, and it was… nice. It was very nice.

“Suddenly, you’ll be forced to follow one of your own stupid fucking rules,” he continued, “and suddenly you realize how much you’d just rather stay home and get laid.”

“Bucky, think for a second.” Steve looked at the ceiling and sighed. “When you go to therapy, I don’t get laid. There’s literally going to be zero difference whether it’s you or me that has an appointment, because when one of us leaves, the other one doesn’t get to screw that one.”

Bucky shrugged. “I’ll just invite Natasha over and we’ll make our own fun.”

“That’s fine.” Steve shrugged right back and finished his steak. “You and Natasha can stay in bed and raise Cain all you like, so long as it doesn’t keep you from your appointments.” He frowned. “And so long as you don’t wear yourselves out before I get back. Sound fair?”

“Sure.” Bucky snorted. “Say that now. But just wait.”

They finished up their meals a few minutes later and the waiter dropped the check off at the table - signed with a giant smiley face and ‘It was a total pleasure to serve y’all tonight!’ scribbled across the bottom.

Bucky looked at Steve and announced with a perfectly straight face, “I’ll be using my senior discount tonight.”

“Your what now?” Steve looked confused.

Bucky flashed his shiny new AARP card. “My senior discount, Steve. I checked when we walked in. I get twenty percent off the check.”

“Your…” Steve leaned in to look at the card. His eyes quickly flashed back to Bucky, wide with surprise, then back to the card. “No way. Really?”

“Really, Steve.” Bucky looked down his nose at him with what he hoped was a smug expression. “It came in with my vet’s card.”

“You’re going to use a senior discount?” Steve lifted a doubtful eyebrow. “Come on, Buck. You don’t look older than thirty-five. They’re going to think it’s a forgery or something.”

The waiter reappeared to collect the check just then. He picked up the AARP card, looked at it skeptically for a moment, and then looked at Bucky.

Steve smirked and mouthed ‘I told you so’ in that overt and obvious way that only he could manage.

“Oh my God.” The waiter’s whole face lit up. “You’re Bucky fucking Barnes. Oh my God, how did I not - how did I not recognize you?” He flapped his hands in excitement. “This is awesome. Oh my God, Captain America _and_ Bucky fucking Barnes are at my table tonight!”

Steve chuckled, unable to hide his smile. “You’re going to be signing autographs all night, Buck. Hope you brought a pen.”

\---

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**that evening**

Natasha missed being able to pick the lock on Rogers’ door, but at least Stark had seen fit to enter her biometric data into the ‘acceptable entrants’ list. She could still come and go as she pleased, even if there wasn’t as much fun to be had in doing so anymore, but if Rogers’ security - and James’ - were the trade-off, she was happy to let go of a little bit of entertainment.

Still, she was pleased to find the apartment unoccupied as she entered. She’d still be able to lie in wait for her boys the way she liked to. And so she settled down on the sofa, propped her feet on the coffee table, and let herself relax. 

The apartment’s decor was entirely her own style (save for the enormous picture of the Brooklyn Bridge that Rogers had insisted on buying.) She’d taken Rogers on his first trip to Ikea when it had become obvious that he wasn’t going to decorate the place himself. She’d spent a lot of time here, whether helping Rogers set up his newly-acquired furniture or sitting on the couch watching silly movies and eating take-out food or rolling around in bed with both James and Rogers. 

She’d made some good memories here.

And as she sat there waiting for James and Rogers to return, she realized she couldn’t fight off the obviousness of the truth: this place felt more like home to her than her own suite of rooms at the Tower.

Maybe Rogers - _Steve_ \- hadn’t been too far off the mark when he’d asked her to move in.

She shook her head quickly to banish that thought. No. She wasn’t ready yet. Not to give up her own living space, not to plunge headlong into full-time communal living. She still needed to be alone sometimes, to figure things out in her own space at her own pace, in her own time. 

Sure, the idea of sharing a bed with her boys on a regular basis was tantalizing - why else would she spend so many nights here? - but she was wary of moving too fast. Especially with something there was no moving back from.

And yet, why did the idea call to her so strongly on those nights when she was settling into her bed in the Tower all alone? And why did the idea of coming back here always make her feel so… _happy_?

The front door opened, and she could hear James and Steve talking.

“The selfie part was weird,” James was saying. “I’m not used to that.”

“Neither was I, in the beginning.” Steve’s voice preceded the slamming of the door. “Trust me. After a while, you’ll get used to it.”

James walked into the room then, and when he saw Natasha, a small smile flitted across his face. [“How long have you been waiting?”]

[“Long enough to get a very good picture in my head of what I want.”] She smirked at him, and at Steve when he walked in the door right behind him. [“Long enough to know you should have come back sooner.”]

She liked the look that danced across James’ face right then. [“You’re going to make me pay for that.”] He pulled off his baseball cap and tossed it aside. [“Aren’t you?”]

“Hey guys?” Steve interrupted predictably, a strained look on his face. “Can somebody translate for me here?”

She smirked, but it quickly turned into a smile. “I feel like being a queen.” Off their confused looks, her smile broadened. “Clothes off. Both of you. Now.”

James and Steve exchanged a glance.

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve replied, his back straightening in reflexive military posture. The grin that broke out across his face, however, was anything but military.

She decided she liked that.

Meanwhile, James hadn’t hesitated and was already skinning his jeans down.

It was going to be a fun night. And Maria and Sharon had been right - it was good to be the queen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FEED THE AUTHOR! NOM NOM NOM!


	37. Feeling Lucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky was silent, and for a long moment, Steve was afraid he was going to dismiss the both of them again with some flippant reply. Then, slowly, his hands drifted to Steve and Natasha’s backs._
> 
> _“You mean **my** bad decisions.” A small, hesitant smile flitted across his face. “You can just say it. I know they’re my bad decisions.” He licked his lips and seemed to be considering his words very carefully. “And lately I… I’ve been feeling….” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for the one who pointed out that happy chapters always precede chapters of terror and horribleness. OH YEAH? WELL... WELL... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> As always, if they're talking ["like this,"] they're speaking Russian, but y'all know that by now. Right?

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**the following morning**

_It’s no fun when your brain wakes up before your eyes want to be open_ was the first coherent thought that coalesced in Steve’s brain that morning. Fortunately, it was quickly displaced by several others, all of which were considerably more pleasant.

Natasha had spent the night again last night, and she was wrapped around Bucky’s left side with his metal arm cradling her. Steve himself was entangled in Bucky’s right arm and leg, his head nestled against Bucky’s chest, and his right hand was trapped between Bucky’s body and Natasha’s. And it was so comfortable to lie there that way with his two favorite people that it seemed like a shame to get up at all.

Still, they’d all need breakfast. And he, at least, was going to need to spend some time at the Tower today. So he very reluctantly peeled himself off of the two of them, shaking his reddened right hand to try to bring the feeling back into it, and headed out of the bedroom as quietly as he could.

He made a mental note to ask Tony if he knew any place that sold beds bigger than a king-size.

Last night had been wonderful, he thought with a satisfied smile as he brushed his teeth and washed his face before heading into the kitchen to start breakfast. 

Natasha had gotten it into her head that she wanted to be absolutely and entirely in charge that night, which had not been a problem whatsoever for either him or Bucky. They’d both taken turns servicing her with their mouths, then doing the same to each other while she watched and recovered. He’d gotten on his elbows and knees and buried his face between Natasha’s legs again while Bucky slowly pumped in and out of him from behind. He’d ground himself against Bucky, their hardnesses rubbing together, while Natasha whispered salaciously into their ears. And more, so much more that he felt himself stirring to life again in his shorts.

He decided to get creative with the eggs, making a couple in every different style he knew. Up, over, scrambled, whatever. He frowned when he saw that he’d run out of waffles, but fortunately he still had plenty of pancake mix. The coffee maker was perking away as the sausages and bacon sizzled in the pan, and life was good.

It would get even better once Natasha decided to move in permanently.

“You’re making breakfast.” Bucky was in the kitchen suddenly, clad in nothing but a pair of shorts, hair a tangled mess and a bleary expression on his face. “Didn’t want to go to IHOP again?”

“Not this morning.” Steve poked at the sausages. It still startled him when Bucky showed up suddenly like that, but it was beginning to bother him less and less. “I figured we’d eat and then go for a run.” He smiled. “Think Natasha’d care to join us?”

“You’re jealous of my senior discount.” Bucky pulled the orange juice carton out of the fridge, set a few glasses on the counter, and filled them. “Aren’t you?”

Steve rolled his eyes at Bucky, trying to give him a glower that didn’t entirely work. Probably because it wound up looking too much like a crooked grin. “You’re way too happy about being almost a hundred.”

“Birthdate’s on my vet’s card. I’m only ninety-eight.” Bucky took a sip of orange juice and instantly made a face. “... toothpaste.”

Steve pulled a face as well, though not for the same reason. It wasn’t right, his mind bellowed indignantly, for Bucky to only know his birthdate from looking at the card. 

“You sort of missed your birthday last year.” Steve grimaced. “And Christmas. And New Year’s.” He shook his head. “We’ll make up for it this year, though, I promise.”

Bucky shrugged. “Never knew my birthday until yesterday, so I haven’t really missed much. And Christmas…” He frowned. “That was usually a work day.”

“Yeah.” Steve winced. “I saw.”

In particular, he remembered the stomach-turning series of murders Bucky had been made to commit throughout Stockholm one Christmas morning in the 1970s. And while assassinations were sickening on any day of the year, there was something particularly egregious - to him, at least - about murdering people on Christmas. 

“But you don’t have to do that anymore.” Steve reached out for Bucky reflexively, putting a hand on his bare shoulder and squeezing gently. “If any of us wind up having to work on Christmas, it’s because we need to keep people safe, not because we’re going out to kill people.”

“Depends on the people, doesn’t it?” Bucky took a hesitant sip of the orange juice and pulled another face. “Toothpaste. Still.”

“Rinse with water.” Steve grinned wryly. “Then try the juice again.”

Bucky washed his mouth out over the sink while Steve finished the pork products and moved on to making pancakes. 

“This year we’re going to go all out on Christmas.” He smiled. “Make up for all those years you missed. Maybe we can even put in an appearance at the big Avengers party, what do you say?”

“Steve?” Bucky turned from the sink and abruptly wrapped his arms around Steve, pressing his front to Steve’s back. His hands settled on Steve’s chest and his mouth tickled the shell of Steve’s ear. “It’s barely August.”

“So?” Steve leaned his head back into Bucky’s touch. “It’s never too early to start planning for a big holiday.”

“Are you talking about Christmas already, Rogers?” yawned Natasha from the doorway. She wore one of Bucky’s long-sleeved Henley shirts, which fell past her hips and off of one shoulder. The sleeves hung down over her hands, which she didn’t seem to either notice or mind as she rubbed at her eyes. “It’s the summertime.”

Bucky snorted. “You heard him.” His lips were soft against Steve’s shoulder. “It’s _never_ too early to start planning for a big holiday.”

“Coffee,” she responded, flopping blearily into a chair. “Then Christmas planning. Priorities, boys.”

Steve chuckled at that, still leaning back against Bucky’s questing lips. “Coffee’s just about ready, Nat.” He reached back to run his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “As for my priorities, I think I’ve got them very well in order.”

“He didn’t want to go to IHOP,” Bucky murmured, tilting his head into Steve’s hand. “He’s jealous of my senior discount card.”

“Your what?” Natasha pushed her extremely rumpled hair back from her face and looked back and forth between Steve and Bucky. “Did I miss something last night?”

“Bucky joined the AARP.” An idea suddenly occurred to Steve, and he laughed through the rest of what he said. “And you kept on saying I was the old man. He got his card before me.”

“I’m ninety-eight,” Bucky said. “I’m entitled.”

“And why am I only just hearing this now?” Natasha cocked an eyebrow at them, and Steve couldn’t help himself.

“Mostly because our mouths were too busy last night to do much talking.”

“Very busy,” Bucky agreed, lips against Steve’s shoulder once more. 

“At your direct order, I might add.” Steve grinned and scratched at Bucky’s scalp through his hair.

“You might want to flip those pancakes.” Before Steve could respond salaciously, Natasha pointed to the pan. “I meant the food, Rogers. Stay focused.”

“I’m focused, I’m focused.” Steve flipped the pancakes, the saucy grin never leaving his face. “But I wouldn’t say no to flipping your pancakes again once we’ve had some breakfast. Unless you’d rather come for a jog with me and Bucky, that is.”

“Jogging first.” Natasha yawned as the coffee maker beeped, and she staggered up from her seat to pour herself a cup. “And I may or may not jump you in the shower afterwards.”

Steve spent the entirety of breakfast and a good portion of the jog with that little image in his mind. Natasha easily kept pace with him and Bucky as they ran, which delighted him to no end. She fit in so perfectly with them, after all, and exercise was just one more thing they could share with her. 

Once she decided to move in, he thought with a smile, things would really be complete. 

Back at the apartment after the jog, Natasha claimed the shower first. Steve didn’t have any complaints about that; he figured he’d fool around with Bucky and then the two of them could try to crowd into the shower alongside her for some fun. 

“How does that sound?” He peeled Bucky’s shirt off and began kissing a trail down his chest towards his stomach.

Bucky leaned back against the wall, his hand landing gently atop Steve’s head. “You think she’ll let both of us into the shower?”

“I think the real issue is whether we’ll all fit in there together,” Steve murmured into Bucky’s stomach. He kissed downward, heading for the waistband of Bucky’s sweatpants. 

Bucky sucked in his breath. “That’s… that’s kind of what I meant.”

“Well then.” Steve pulled out Bucky’s waistband with one finger and continued kissing ever downward. “I guess we’ll just have to bring her out.”

He still couldn’t entirely wrap his head around the fact that they could do this. It was all still so new, so uncharted, that sometimes he had a hard time remembering that it wasn’t simply an extremely erotic fantasy. He’d thrown himself into it without hesitation, plowing eagerly forward into this relationship he’d never even imagined before, and he’d never once looked back. Really, what reason was there to?

Wiry hair tickled his chin as he kissed still lower, and he felt his shorts getting uncomfortably tight as a series of promising images danced across his mind.

Bucky’s fingers tightened in Steve’s hair. “Steve…” he whispered.

His StarkTech phone screeched, signaling a priority call.

“Damn it!” Bucky scowled, his metal hand curling into a fist at his side. “Do we have to answer?”

“Yes.” Steve gritted his teeth in unspeakable frustration. “It’s a priority call.” He muttered a few choice swear words under his breath as he sat back on his heels and reached for the phone. 

‘Cockblockers’ may have been chief among them.

Natasha came out of the bathroom then, wrapped in a towel, the smile on her face quickly sobering when she saw Steve on the phone.

Bucky muttered something in Russian to her. Steve could only assume it was something along the lines of “fucking cockblocking priority call.”

“Rogers,” he managed tersely. “Go ahead.”

“Captain, it’s Coulson.” Maria Hill likely had the day off, Steve reminded himself. “You’re going to want to move quickly on the latest intel. Edgar Lascombe’s just rolled over on Lukin.”

“What have you got, Phil?” Steve’s eyes widened, and he beckoned to Bucky and Natasha as he switched the phone to speaker mode.

“His location at a top-secret HYDRA safehouse in Siberia.” Phil’s voice was as crisp and even as always, but Steve could detect a prominent note of satisfaction in it just the same. “Along with enough sworn testimony to charge him with two dozen violations of high-profile international law.”

Bucky said nothing, but his jaw visibly tightened. Natasha put a hand on his arm.

“Get a Quinjet out to me as fast as you can, Phil.” Steve was already stripping off his shirt and heading for his uniform. “I’ve got Bucky and Natasha here with me, but I’ll want every available special agent ready for backup. Clint, Sam, Carol, Rhodey - anybody and everybody you can give me.”

“Quinjet’s on its way, Captain.” He could hear the smile in Coulson’s voice. “It should reach you inside of ten minutes. I’ll pass along the alert and keep you posted.”

“Sharon’s probably already on her way.” Natasha had dropped her towel and was hurriedly pulling on her uniform - she had thought to keep one there just in case, and good thing. “If I know her, and I do, she’ll be the one piloting the Quinjet.” 

Steve felt a momentary twinge of regret that they’d missed out on a morning of playtime, especially looking at Natasha’s nakedness for the moment or two it was on display, but it passed quickly. This was way more important. This was their chance to take down Lukin. 

Bucky methodically pulled his combat uniform on. He zipped up his Neoprene jacket and laced his boots. He still hadn’t said a word.

“We’re doing it by the book this time, Buck.” Steve finished donning his own uniform and went over to stand by Bucky. “No going off on your own. No ill-advised stunts like last time. We do this together, have you got me?”

Bucky holstered his SIG-Sauer pistol and sheathed a couple of knives. The larger weapons would have to wait until he was on the Helicarrier. And still, he remained silent. 

“Are you listening, James?” Natasha came up beside Steve, tightening the wrist straps on her Widow’s Bites and looking at Bucky with as serious an expression as Steve had ever seen. “You stay with us for the entire mission. That’s the only way this is going to work.”

“I heard you,” Bucky said shortly. “Both of you.”

“Just hearing us isn’t enough, Buck.” Steve folded his arms. “You heard us last time. You just didn’t pay attention, and you wound up coming this close -” Steve held up his finger and thumb, a bare inch between his fingertips. “- to flushing every bit of your recovery down the toilet.”

Bucky gritted his teeth. Sucked in his breath. “I’m paying attention.”

“You’d better be.” Natasha shook her still-wet hair back out of her face. “Because if you make the same mistake this time, we may not get another chance.”

Bucky looked at her. “Acknowledged.”

The butterflies in Steve’s stomach seemed to be turning into angry hornets. So much was at stake here, and his mind began asking him all sorts of nasty questions. Were they sure they’d gotten rid of all the shutdown commands? Was there still a way for Lukin to take control of Bucky, or to put him out of action? To render him comatose with a word, or to simply kill him outright?

He felt as though he’d never had so much to lose in all his life.

“You’ve got to promise me, Buck.” He reached up to out both hands on the sides of Bucky’s face, leaning in so that their foreheads touched. “I can’t go through losing you again. We’ve come so far - accomplished so much…”

“We love you.” Natasha was suddenly there with them, reaching up her hands to cup first Bucky’s face, then Steve’s as well. “I’m the luckiest woman in the world, and I’m not going to stand for anyone’s bad decisions lousing that up.”

Bucky was silent, and for a long moment, Steve was afraid he was going to dismiss the both of them again with some flippant reply. Then, slowly, his hands drifted to Steve and Natasha’s backs. 

“You mean _my_ bad decisions.” A small, hesitant smile flitted across his face. “You can just say it. I know they’re my bad decisions.” He licked his lips and seemed to be considering his words very carefully. “And lately I… I’ve been feeling….” He took a breath. “I’ve been feeling pretty lucky, too.”

“Aw, Buck.” Steve felt a wobbly sort of smile materialize on his face, and he enveloped him in a big, crushing hug that managed to enfold Natasha as well. “You’re more important to me than anything in this world.” He planted a firm kiss on Bucky’s cheek, then smiled and bent his head down to plant another one on the top of Natasha’s head. “You both are. And if none of us forget that, then everything’ll turn out all right.”

“You boys are the best.” Natasha hugged them quickly, then slithered out of their grasp. “Quinjet’s here. Let’s get moving.”

\---

Of course the General would be hidden away somewhere in Siberia.

At the debriefing on the Helicarrier, Agent Coulson explained to the assembled group that the General was hidden in northern Siberia, in a location so remote that the nearest urban center was 100 miles away in Chokurdakh (population 2,367).

Sam Wilson raised an eyebrow. “That counts as urban now?”

Natasha smiled thinly. “In Siberia, that’s as urban as it comes.”

“Give us a rundown on the safehouse,” Steve cut in. His thumbs were hooked in his belt, and his face was all business. “Everything above and below ground, all surrounding structures, every single possible escape route, everything.”

Coulson pulled up a computer image of the place and quickly laid out the basics. The compound, like nearly every other compound Bucky had ever been to in Siberia, was much bigger below ground than it was on the surface. It was the only building for dozens of miles, surrounded by short, scrubby growth amidst frozen stretches of nothingness. There were escape tunnels, naturally, all leading out to what would appear to be random locations in the surrounding area but which closer inspection would reveal to be cleverly camouflaged supply stations with weapons caches and escape vehicles. 

Bucky’s jaw tightened. He had spent a lot of time in similar compounds over the decades. There was a real chance he had done a stint in cryo in the compound they were heading to.

The thought made his eyes widen slightly.

[“Do you know this place, James?”] Natasha touched his right arm gently.

[“I might’ve spent some time asleep there at any point.”] He murmured the words under his breath, right as Steve began detailing mission parameters. [“It could be the most fucked up homecoming.”]

[“We’ll make it worth your while.”] She smiled humorlessly, but with a glint of dark pleasure in her eyes. [“We’re not leaving here without Lukin, one way or another.”]

Bucky said nothing to that. He didn’t have to.

Five hours later saw him on a Quinjet - along with Steve, Natasha, and a handful of others - rapidly approaching the compound. 

He had always hated the ‘hurry up and wait’ component of any mission. He sat strapped into a seat, chewing on a protein bar, having long since run through dozens of possible mission scenarios in his head. 

“Think of it this way, Buck.” Steve must have caught the look on Bucky’s face. “If we weren’t on a Quinjet doing Mach 3, we’d have had fifteen hours to wait instead of five.”

Sam popped a handful of peanuts into his mouth. “Think of it as a little downtime before all the death and terror starts.”

Sharon smiled. “You have such a way with words, babe.”

“Wish I’d brought my macrame.” Natasha looked up from checking her gear for the tenth time. “But it looks like we’re about to hit the drop point.”

“By the numbers, everyone.” Steve buckled the chinstrap of his helmet and checked his shield. “Stay in contact at all times, no unnecessary risks, check all entrances and exits…”

“Look both ways before crossing the street, and don’t lose track of your buddy.” Natasha smirked wryly before putting a hand on Steve’s arm. “We won’t screw this up, Steve. Trust us.”

The drop points were several miles out from the compound. Attempting to fly directly over (or even close) to the compound would likely result in being welcomed by a missile, and wouldn’t that be a shitty ending to things? Instead, the various mission teams were going to attempt to enter the compound through the tunnels connected to the many hidden supply stations. 

The weather on the ground was a crisp 36°, made chillier by persistent wind and light, spattering rain. 

Sam affixed his goggles on his eyes. “Least it’s cloudy. They won’t see us wandering around like targets in the moonlight.”

Sharon nodded. “Stay low to the ground.”

“And,” Sam continued with a small smile, “least you’re not wearing that white disco suit.”

“Dammit, Sam,” Sharon said without heat, “for the last time, I was going to the club.”

Bucky looked over at Steve. “You do know how to sneak around? You’re not just going to run shiny white star first into gunfire?”

Sharon snorted.

“I can do both.” Steve shouldered into Bucky with a sort of smiling scowl. “I did sneak into the HYDRA base to get you, didn’t I?”

“Great.” Natasha smirked. “The last time you snuck anywhere was in 1943. We’re all screwed.”

The banter faded off as they approached the entry point. A layer of camouflage mesh covered a quartet of snowmobiles and several coffin-sized metal crates, all surrounding a wide metal hatchway in the ground. 

The team moved fast. Sharon whipped out a code-breaking device that got the hatch opened in seconds. Steve and Sam stood watch, bodies rigid with tension. Bucky exchanged a glance with Natasha before they two of them dropped soundlessly into the dark of the tunnel.

Two guards, both occupied with a Russian soap opera. It took two seconds to dispatch the both of them. 

No security cameras that they could see. 

Bucky unshouldered the M249 Paratrooper light machine gun. He had fitted the rifle with a Mark 4 HAMR optic - the better to target hostiles on the other end of the tunnel.

[“They won’t all be watching soap operas,”] he muttered to Natasha.

“English, please,” Coulson said calmly into his earpiece.

Behind him, Steve, Sam, and Sharon dropped noiselessly into the tunnel. 

No alarms yet (not that they could hear), but it was only a matter of _when_ someone noticed the two guards hadn’t reported in. 

The tunnel didn’t run straight for its entire length, twisting at ninety-degree turns at staggered intervals - the better to both slow down intruders and offer convenient ambush points. 

No new guards. No obvious cameras. 

Which meant it was either a trap or just poorly set up. Probably the first one.

Natasha signaled them to stop when they reached the door at the end of the tunnel. They all fanned out, Steve moving forward with his shield upraised. Natasha silently attached a device to the door, punched a few buttons and stepped back, a small smile flitting across her face. 

A small but accurate three-dimensional image of the room on the other side projected in the air in front of them. Six guards - two on the door and two on each other door inside the room - so far unaware of their presence.

Bucky looked at Natasha, raised an eyebrow. “StarkTech?” he mouthed.

She nodded, her smile changing to a smirk. She powered the device down, stowed it, and held up three fingers. 

Then two.

Then one.

\---

As Natasha started flashing the three-count, Steve readied himself. The guards weren’t expecting them, and there were only six of them. If everything went well, it would all be over in a few seconds.

When Natasha reached zero, Steve hurled himself forward, barreling into the door shield-first and knocking it off its hinges. The two guards on the other side were carried along with it and pinned underneath when it fell. Bucky and Sharon brought down the other four with a quick burst of gunfire, and Natasha and Sam moved in fast to secure the room.

Steve was just about to offer them a thumbs-up of approval when a shrill klaxon began blaring.

“What happened?” He was instantly alert, looking around the room for sensors or cameras they might have overlooked. They’d lost the element of surprise, and Lukin was still here somewhere.

“General alarm,” came Coulson’s crisp reply over the secure channel. “One of Agent Barton’s targets was a lot quicker off the mark than any of us expected. Hit the alarm before anyone could drop him.”

“Get me a location on Lukin!” Steve raised the shield as both the other doors burst open and a flood of soldiers - both HYDRA and Kronas, he noticed - began to pour into the room. “Somebody get a lock on him and make sure he doesn’t make it past us!”

A guard collided with Sam, who sprang into the air with a wing-assisted leap and smashed the man’s head into the ceiling. He came down hard with both boots on the shoulders of another, spoiling the shot he’d just lined up on Sharon, and spun in a quick circle with wings outstretched, the solid metal knocking out the handful who weren’t fast enough to get out of the way.

Steve lashed out with the shield in a backhand blow at one guard while tagging another right behind the ear with a roundhouse kick. Both went down, and Steve used his momentum to spin and hurl the shield right into the face of a Kronas soldier. Rebounding, the shield passed over Steve’s head as he dropped into a crouch and ricocheted of the head of the soldier behind him. He caught it smoothly and whirled to cover Sam.

Natasha, meanwhile, had two pistols out and was alternating between them. Steve knew she was keeping a careful count of how many shots she had left, and even when she paused to reload one pistol, the other was never empty - something more than one guard learned too late.

Bucky drove the point of his combat knife up under one guard’s chin, then yanked it free to twirl it backhanded and drive it into the thigh of a Kronas soldier to his side. The man dropped to his knees and Bucky turned a graceful twisting backflip over him to bring the back of his heel down on the top of the skull of a guard approaching Steve. He finished the kneeling man off with a metal elbow to the back of his head.

“This is already taking too much time,” Bucky said through gritted teeth. “He knows we’re here.”

“Where is he, Phil?” Steve shouted into his comm as he brought the shield up to deflect a hail of gunfire. “Where’s Lukin?”

“No sign of him in the tunnels or outside the compound.” Coulson’s response was as unperturbed as ever. “He’s still in there, Captain.”

Abruptly the gunfire stopped, and Bucky wiped the knife against his pants and jammed it back into its sheath. A pile of dead or wounded soldiers lay at his feet, their weapons against twitching fingers. 

Sharon and Natasha reloaded their weapons, looking warily around, and Sam refolded his wings. Steve, meanwhile, remained tense and at the ready, expecting the next wave to hit them any moment.

“We don’t have a lot of time.” Bucky unshouldered his rifle. “He’s not just going to wait for us to come to him.” He turned and took off down the corridor.

“Buck, wait!” Steve headed down the hallway after him, shield still at the ready and a note of unease rising in his voice. “We need to stick together!”

Bucky paused at the end of the corridor, metal hand gripping the handle of a steel door. “Hurry up then.”

Steve looked back over his shoulder, saw Natasha and Sam and Sharon hustling down the corridor after him, and ran the last few yards to Bucky. He readied himself, took a couple of deep breaths, and nodded.

Bucky wrenched the door clean off its hinges with his powerful bionic limb, flinging it down the hallway past the rest of them. Steve brought the shield up reflexively as the huge steel projectile flew by him, and the others dodged back out of the way.

That was what saved them.

A wall of soldiers stood behind the door, weapons at the ready, and opened fire in a deafening fusillade. Steve ducked behind the shield, bullets ricocheting wildly off its invulnerable surface, while Sam unfolded his wings again and brought them up to shield himself and Sharon. Natasha edged behind Steve, already lining up a shot over his shoulder. But Bucky was right at the front.

“Bucky!” Steve lunged forward recklessly, the bullets making an awful racket as they clanged against the shield. But Bucky had waded right into the midst of the knot of soldiers.

Two crumpled at a single sweeping blow of his metal arm, blood streaming from various places in their heads as they collapsed limply to the floor. A vicious, driving heel kick sent another soldier flying backward into the handful of soldiers behind him, knocking them all down like bowling pins. A high roundhouse kick with the steel toe of his booted foot connected with the temple of another man, striking home with a dull cracking sound and dropping the soldier nervelessly to the floor.

Steve flung his shield into the group of soldiers who’d been knocked to the floor and leapt feetfirst into the fray. Every one of the men who’d been knocked down got a hard boot-heel to the head as incentive to stay down. 

Natasha and Sharon began picking off the others, and the tide was definitely turning in their favor -

“Grenade!” Sam shouted, close by Steve’s ear, and he was only just able to shoulder Bucky aside before the explosion.

The room vanished in a flash of hot light, the world tilting sickeningly under Steve’s feet before he was blown back against the wall. 

He was dimly aware of chunks of debris clanking against the shield; he felt the heat from the flames only as an afterthought. Through the ringing in his ears, he could discern Coulson’s voice over the comm channel, ordering everyone to report in. And as he struggled to get his feet under him, he saw that the rest of them were doing the same.

Sharon seemed the least hurt of all of them; Sam had managed to shield her behind his wings, but he’d taken a couple of light shrapnel wounds himself. Bucky had been behind Steve when the grenade had gone off. He was just beginning to clamber awkwardly to his feet, covered in dust and bleeding from the nose. He spat out a mouthful of blood, looking pissed off and decidedly the worse for wear. 

Natasha had been able to dart behind a column to avoid the brunt of the blast, but a chunk of concrete had struck a glancing blow on the side of the head and blood was steadily streaming down the right side of her face, covering it in a crimson mask.

None of the soldiers moved.

Bucky and Natasha exchanged a glance, and then Bucky looked at Steve. “We have to keep moving,” he said loudly. Too loudly, as if his ears were ringing. “We can’t wait.”

“He’s right,” Natasha said, not nearly as loud. “We’ve lost the element of surprise. We need to rely on speed now.”

“Speed.” Sam nodded, his shoulders heaving as he sucked wind. “Sure. I can do that.”

“Stay close.” Steve heaved himself to his feet, knowing he was going to be plenty sore in the morning but knowing just as well that he didn’t have the luxury of being hurt right then. “And stay alert. These guys don’t seem to care whether or not they bring the whole building down on our heads.”

Steve barreled down the hallway at top speed, not even slowing down as he reached the doorway but smashing into it shield-first and bursting the doors off their hinges. His momentum carried him right into the crowd of soldiers waiting in the room, bowling them all over. 

Before he could get to his feet, several of them latched onto him and held him down, and he struggled as hard as he could, but the ones on their feet were bringing their weapons to bear, and he couldn’t even get the shield up to protect himself, and -

“Incoming!”

Sam rocketed into the room, his wings pulled way back, streaking like a red-and-white bullet into the midst of the guards and scattering them wildly. He landed neatly, flinging out his wings to knock anyone still standing to the ground.

Bucky was hot on his tail, rushing immediately forward to grab one soldier by the back of his collar with his metal hand and fling him off Steve. The man crashed headfirst into the wall and sagged into a broken heap on the floor.

Another soldier, a bear of a man, reached down with one hand to seize Steve’s throat. Steve, though, scissored his legs up and around the back of the man’s neck, pulling him down until the man’s own arm was across his throat. The surprise and anger at finding himself being smothered by his own arm was clear on the man’s face, but his struggles didn’t last for more than a few seconds before he went limp.

“Wow, Rogers.” Natasha swatted him on the ass as she passed him. “You’re learning. Good boy.”

“I learned that during the war.” Steve levered the huge man off of himself, then struggled up into a sitting position. “Jim Morita taught me.”

\---

Bucky’s ears were still ringing, and the continual screech of the alarm wasn’t helping things. His eardrums weren’t bleeding though (so far as he could tell), so that was good.

The team fought their way through another series of what felt like endless rooms connected by a winding tunnel, and the bodies were beginning to pile up.

Life had always been cheap with HYDRA. 

They finally made it to a foyer containing a stairwell behind a fire door and two elevators. No soldiers currently in the foyer, but that didn’t mean they weren’t on the stairs or even in the elevators.

“So what’s it going to be?” Sharon asked, hands on hips. “The slow way, full of soldiers and bullets, or the quick way, only to potentially have the cables cut or the elevator stop on a floor full of death?

“Aw, babe.” Sam shook his head. “You say the sweetest things.”

“Quick way,” Steve volunteered. “Speed counts, remember?”

“Steve knows how to fight in elevators, if it comes to that.” Natasha smirked. “And James and I know how to deal with empty elevator shafts. So, yeah. Quick way.”

“Two separate groups,” Bucky said, and before Steve could remind him that they were doing everything together, dammit, he added, “If one group gets slowed down, we still have another.”

“In other words,” Sharon said. “If one group dies, the other soldiers on.”

Bucky nodded.

“Fine.” Steve looked pissed. “But you’re staying with me. And that’s not up for discussion, understood?”

“And I’m not letting you out of my sight.” Natasha folded her arms.

Bucky rolled his eyes. With his back to Natasha, of course. Steve could see him though, which was good.

Sharon smirked and pressed one of the elevator buttons. “Why not just put him on a leash?”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “I might.”

The elevator doors opened. No bombs went off, which was a good. No soldiers were inside, which also good. Steve got in, looking up at the ceiling of the car as he did. Bucky and Natasha followed, the doors closing after them.

“I told Nick Fury once that I remembered when they used to play music in elevators,” Steve muttered as the elevator started going down. “I’m glad there isn’t any now.”

Natasha shrugged. “I think ‘ _Don’t Worry, Be Happy_ ’ would be a fine song right about now.”

The elevator stopped.

Bucky readied his M249.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL, WASN'T THAT FULL OF TERROR AND HORRIBLENESS? WAS IT? 
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Feed the author!


	38. Walk in the Park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _James licked his lips. [“See? Let’s keep going.”]_
> 
> _[“Hold still, James.”] Natasha paused to relieve the dead man of his belt. [“I’m going to plug you up before you bleed out.”]  
> _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Make of this opening note what you will.
> 
> ( ˘ ³˘)♥

**same place**  
**just then**

As the elevator descended, Steve tightened the wrist straps on his gloves and took a few deep breaths. To his right, Natasha reloaded her Glocks. To his left, Bucky had been standing motionless until his head suddenly snapped back, looking up at the ceiling as a trio of dull thuds sounded from above.

“Three on the roof.” Natasha cut her eyes to Steve. “They’re going to cut the cable.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “They’re going to try.”

He slammed the emergency stop button with his elbow, locking the brakes and bringing the elevator to a sudden stop. If the cable wound up giving way now, at least they wouldn’t plummet immediately.

“Bucky!” He brought the shield up high and readied himself for a leap. “I need a boost!”

Bucky nodded, cupping his hands low for a stirrup. Steve put his foot into Bucky’s hands and launched himself as Bucky hurled him upwards, hitting the roof access panel shield-first and exploding through it up onto the roof. 

Shards of metal and plastic peppered the three Kronas guards, dealing a nasty cut to the face of the one who’d been about to cut through the steel cable with a plasma torch. He staggered back, but the other two raised their weapons in unison and fired.

Steve brought the shield up reflexively, the bullets ricocheting off of it and caroming wildly around the elevator shaft. He cried out in pain as one sliced across the side of his left thigh, but he’d already gotten enough of a head of steam to propel himself forward and smash into the two gunners with the shield. 

They both slammed against the wall, and Steve pinned one there with the shield as he drove a hard right cross into the point of the second one’s jaw, sending him down for the count.

The one wielding the torch had recovered enough to lunge forward again, this time attempting to use the plasma cutter as a weapon. Steve managed to brace himself against the soldier he’d kept pinned between the wall and the shield and folded him in half with a reverse thrust kick to the stomach. 

The man dropped like a rock, clutching at a probably ruptured liver while the torch clattered to the roof of the elevator, still sparking.

The last soldier, the one Steve was crushing against the wall, managed to bring both legs up and, with a massive heave, push Steve off of him to slam spine-first against the far wall of the elevator shaft. 

The shield clattered to the roof of the elevator. 

Steve tried to shake off the stunning impact, but the man flicked out a knife and lunged forward. Steve twisted out of the way of the blade just barely. The soldier, though, was quicker and cagier than he’d expected.

The man rammed the point of his elbow right into the bridge of Steve’s nose, sending white sparks dancing before Steve’s eyes. Blinded and stunned, Steve brought his forearms up on instinct alone just in time to deflect a second stab. He blinked furiously, trying to clear the tears from his eyes, and felt the elevator cable against his left arm. 

On a sudden inspiration, he spun around it, putting it between himself and the soldier, and the man’s next blow was intercepted by the cable. Steve feinted to one side, then the other, trying to circle around the cable and get back to the shield, but the soldier moved with him, jabbing with the knife to keep him back.

He had to get back down to Bucky and Natasha. Had to start the elevator moving again, had to get them all to Lukin before the psychopath managed to escape again. 

The soldier slid forward with a downward slash again, and this time Steve didn’t dodge. He lunged forward and seized the man’s knife hand in both of his. The man drove a hard knee into Steve’s stomach, and they both tumbled to the ground, the soldier landing on top. 

Steve reached up with both hands, bracing himself against the knife, but the man leaned on the knife with all his weight and forced the point inexorably downward towards the hollow of Steve’s throat. Steve’s eyes flickered desperately around, looking for something to help him, but the shield was out of reach, and the man had too much weight and leverage for him to hold back from such an awkward position -

Wait!

Steve shifted his grip slightly, the pressure shifting with it, and the knife came down in a sudden lurch to clang against the metal roof of the elevator. And Steve rolled suddenly to the side, still holding the man’s hands in his grip and bringing them down directly on the purple-white arc of the still-sparking plasma cutter.

The man shrieked in agony as his flesh was burned, dropping the knife and wrenching himself away from the torch, and Steve rolled away to the other side. And as the man clambered onto one foot and one knee, Steve lunged forward. He planted one foot on the man’s upraised knee, propelling himself off of it to drive his other knee into the center of the man’s face. The man’s head snapped backwards, his body suddenly going as limp as a wet sheet, and Steve sank down to his knees, his breath heaving.

“All clear up here,” he called down to Bucky and Natasha as he switched off the plasma cutter and picked up the shield.

\---

Steve had just barely gotten through the roof access panel when the doors had shuddered from a blow. Then another, and another, and then the doors screeched horribly as they were  
slowly levered apart from the outside.

James brought up his M249 and retreated to the right corner of the elevator. Natasha readied her Glocks and went to the left corner. The door opened a crack, and she realized they were staring _up_ at the floor.

They had the low ground.

A dark expression flitted across James’ face. The instant the doors were far enough apart for a shot to pass through them, James opened fire. 

On the other side of the door, someone screamed shrilly and hit the ground, but the doors were still being wrenched open. Natasha fired a single shot of her own through the widening gap between the doors, heard a guttural cry of pain, and flattened herself into the corner as the barrel of an automatic rifle appeared in the crack.

A spray of shots hosed the interior of the elevator, the bullets making clanking sounds as they pierced the metal. James had wedged himself into the other corner near the door, holding his rifle close to his chest and waiting - she knew - for a pause in the gunfire so he could come out and return fire. And sure enough, the pause came after only a few seconds.

Except when she and James darted out from their respective corners and brought their weapons up, they were greeted by a small metal canister that clattered through the open doorway to the floor of the elevator.

Natasha didn’t hesitate for even a fraction of an instant. Before the canister could bounce once, she dove to the floor. Before it could hit the floor a second time, she’d nabbed it out of the air. And before it could explode, she’d pitched it right back out the doors of the elevator.

Right back where it had come from.

There was a split second of panicked shouting - a cacophony of curses in Russian and English - before the deafening explosion and blinding flare of the flashbang grenade. Natasha and James, being shielded by the half-closed doors and the uneven floor level, were unaffected by it. The soldiers in the hallway, however, were nowhere near as lucky.

Time to go.

[“Your turn, James.”] She holstered her Glocks and interlaced her fingers, making a stirrup for him as he’d done for Steve just a few moments ago.

[“You always did amaze me,”] he said, darting forward and launching himself off her hands. He crashed through the doors of the elevator - flattening one soldier who’d been unlucky enough to be right in his path - and rolled onto his feet. Another pair of soldiers, staggering around in confusion, were clubbed into oblivion by his metal arm without putting up a fight. 

Natasha backed up against the wall of the elevator. She gave herself a running start, leapt high, and dove through the doorway to slide hands-first on her stomach across the floor into the hallway. Her Glocks were still holstered, but her Widow’s Bites were at the ready.

A single dart from each wrist launcher struck home before she’d even gotten her feet under her, dropping two soldiers unconscious to the floor. Another man, bringing his weapon up, got her boot heel under his chin as she vaulted to her feet. A fourth managed to let loose a burst of gunfire that sprayed the hallway before she kicked the gun aside, scooped his neck, and gave a sharp twist with a pull at the same time. There was a sound like the cracking of a green branch and the man flopped lifelessly to the floor.

But the damage had been done.

[“James?”] She darted forward. One round from the poorly-aimed burst had gone through James’ side right above the hip bone, and blood was steadily soaking his Neoprene jacket. She put her hands on him, concern taking over her. [“Talk to me.”]

[“I’m okay,”] James panted through gritted teeth. His face was shiny with sweat. [“I’m fine.”] As if to prove it, he unholstered his SIG-Sauer pistol and shot the first soldier who came through the door.

The man dropped to the floor noiselessly, a bullet in his forehead.

James licked his lips. [“See? Let’s keep going.”]

[“Hold still, James.”] Natasha paused to relieve the dead man of his belt. [“I’m going to plug you up before you bleed out.”]

“Can we please keep it in English?” Steve swung through the open elevator and grimaced somewhat as he landed, favoring his left leg. He seemed to be bleeding from a cut on his thigh, but his look of pain was replaced by a look of concern as he saw James. “Oh my God. Buck, let me see that.”

Bucky snorted. “Back off, mother hen. She’s got this.”

“Mother…” Steve spluttered indignantly for a moment as Natasha quickly covered the bleeding bullet wound with wadded cloth and cinched the dead man’s belt around James’ waist to hold it in place. 

Steve ended up shaking his head with a look of mingled relief and irritation. “You take too many chances.”

The door to the second elevator opened suddenly.

Without missing a beat, Steve pivoted on the balls of his feet and flung the shield at the doors-

-only to have it bounce off the back of Sam’s metal wings before rebounding off a wall and returning to Steve.

“Holy shit, dude.” Sam turned slowly to face the group, his arms still protectively around Sharon’s waist. “Maybe count to one next time.”

“Oh God.” Steve looked absolutely mortified and took a few steps toward Sam and Sharon. “I am so sorry. I just… I didn’t…”

Sharon snorted. “Time to switch to decaf, Rogers.”

An explosion tore through the room. 

Natasha was blown off her feet, right through the open doorway. She hit a wall and crashed gracelessly to the ground as debris rained down from above.

\---

The floor lurched and then disappeared under Bucky’s feet, and he plummeted down through thick smoke and darkness. 

He slammed bodily onto something cold and metallic - a floor? a table? - his rifle skittering away into the dust cloud, and before he could get his bearings, he was pummeled by chunks of ceiling and floor raining down like hot boulders.

Distantly he could hear other explosions, but his ears rang a steady high pitched whine, and everything sounded muffled, as if he were underwater.

He tasted blood in his mouth. Felt dust and grit in his eyes. His legs were pinned down by pieces of ceiling and light fixtures. Debris crashed down onto the fingers of his right hand, a shock of pain tearing through him.

“Bucky?” Steve shouted frantically into his earpiece. “Bucky, where are you? Natasha? Sam? Sharon? Anybody!”

Bucky took a breath, coughed a lungful of thick dust. “Not… not dead, Steve.” His own voice sounded far away to his damaged ears. “Not dead.”

Not yet.

He tried to wiggle his right fingers; they throbbed in hot agony. Broken then, but he could work through pain. He always had. 

It took some maneuvering, but he managed to move the debris off his legs. Something metallic had torn through the left leg of his pants and embedded itself in his thigh, and he could feel the warm, steady trickle of blood soaking into the thick fabric.

Well, shit.

A ChemLight would have been a fucking luxury right then.

Slowly, scrabbling in the thick dark, he pulled himself to his knees and then to his feet. His right ankle protested sharply, and he gritted his teeth as a sharp spasm ricocheted across his body and nearly knocked him off his feet.

Push through it. Work through it.

“Natalia?” He spat blood and dirt, wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. [“Status?”]

“Not hurt too badly.” Though it sounded as if she might have just been saying that. “Not sure where anyone else is. The roof caved in and blocked the door.”

[“Acknowledged.”] He sucked in his breath. Remembered to correct himself without being told. “Copy… copy that.”

He took a step forward, and his ankle nearly twisted out from under him, a hot spike of agony shooting up through his leg.

Fuck.

“Buck, are you hurt?” Panic filled Steve’s voice, high and sharp. “Talk to me, Bucky!”

“Walk in the park, Steve.” He took another step forward, nearly stumbled, but managed to stay on his feet. “Nice and bright and sunny.”

Again, he tried to flex the fingers of his right hand, and that earned him another sickening shudder that rippled through his body before he clamped his jaw and willed it away.

Push through it.

Fine. His right hand was useless for the time being. 

With his left hand, he reached for his SIG-Sauer, but the holster was empty. He couldn’t remember dropping it, but it didn’t matter. The compact Glock G42 would have to do. He un-holstered it and released the safety. 

Better a small gun than no gun. Better his left hand than no hand. 

Somewhere in the distance - he couldn’t tell how far - a sliver of golden light cracked through the darkness. It looked like light from under a door, maybe, and he staggered toward it. 

“Don’t bullshit me, Bucky.” Steve sounded worried. “You stay put, do you hear me? Stay put and keep talking to me. I’m coming to get you.”

He took another, unsteady step forward and winced, right hand going to his stomach. The fabric of his jacket was damp; his hand came away wet with blood.

More shrapnel.

“How you gonna do that, Stevie?” His fingers tightened over the Glock. “You’re floors away.”

“God damn it, Bucky, just quit arguing with me and do like I tell you!” The panicked worry in Steve’s voice made him sound near to tears. “I’ll find you. I promise. But you’ve got to stay with me, do you understand?”

Something like a smile flitted across Bucky’s face.

“Gotcha, Stevie. Loud and clear.”

With one hand against his stomach and the other clutching the Glock, he lurched toward the sliver of light. The light was hazy and soft, filtered through the dust particles heavy in the air, and he didn’t know how far he walked, but finally his hand was against a metal door.

He pushed the door open.

[“Well, Soldier. Isn’t this poetic?”] 

Bucky froze. His stomach curdled with an awful mixture of acid and fire. 

The room was lined wall-to-wall with monitors showing the compound’s security camera feeds. The voice had come from the swivel chair before the bank of monitors. It had been facing the screens, but now it rotated slowly around to face Bucky.

The General sat in the chair. Smiling.

[“You and your friends came here looking for me.”] The General’s smile grew even wider, but his black eyes were as cold and cruel as ever. [“And I’ve been here waiting for you. Appropriate, don’t you think?”]

Bucky’s mind screamed at him to raise the Glock and fire. Fire now, before the General managed to get away again.

His arm didn’t seem to want to move.

[“What’s the matter, Soldier?”] The General laughed mockingly, spreading his hands wide. [“You’ve been wanting this for a long time. It’s as simple as pointing the gun at me and pulling the trigger, and you can’t even get that right anymore.”]

The General stood up from the chair, his laughter stopping abruptly. His eyes narrowed and his mirth turned to the cold anger Bucky was so familiar with.

[“At every turn you demonstrate the need for your own subjugation.”] The General shook his head in disgust. [“You never considered that I had the means of subduing you. You never let the thought cross your feeble mind that I could reclaim you even without the chair or the doctor. And you very clearly never thought that I had other means of controlling you.”]

[“James, get out of there now.”] Natasha’s voice was full of cold terror. [“Now, do you hear me? Now!”]

“Bucky, what the hell’s going on?” Panic, high and sharp and terrified, echoed in Steve’s desperate yelling. “I told you to stay put! Where are you?”

Bucky couldn’t move his arm. It hung by his side, heavy and useless, fingers curled around the Glock but unable to do a damn thing with it.

“Steve, it’s Lukin!” Natasha sounded just as desperate as Steve. “He found Lukin, but something’s… I don’t know. Wrong.” Her voice shook. “Very wrong.”

The fingers of his right hand clenched over his stomach. He willed the rest of his body forward, one slow step at a time, his ankle and damaged thigh screaming in agonized protest the whole way.

“Nothing wrong,” he said through gritted teeth, blood sharp on his tongue. “Don’t worry.”

“No!” Steve shouted in panicked desperation, his voice breaking. “Bucky, run! Get out of there! He’ll kill you, or worse! Please!”

[“Think back to the last time, Soldier.”] The General’s eyes glittered dangerously as he slowly advanced. [“When you sat in your restraints as I spoke the words that undid your mind. Think about how you tried to move your arm and found it wouldn’t obey you.”] He smiled cruelly. [“Does it feel familiar?”]

Push through it. He’d have to push through it.

The General’s eyes suddenly blazed, and his smile became a sneer. [“Did you really believe I would have no means of controlling the only part of you that was fully Soviet-made?”]

[“Move, James!”] Natasha was shouting now. [“Get away from him!”]

Running wasn’t an option. Bucky’s legs were too badly damaged for him to get very far and he wasn’t sure how bad the wound in his stomach was, but he could still feel fresh, warm blood on his fingers.

But failure wasn’t an option either. He’d never get another chance at this. The General would either stick him back in the freezer or kill him outright. 

Move, then.

 _Move_.

He bit down on his tongue so hard he tasted a new rush of blood, and that was enough of a distraction. His metal fingers twitched. 

_Move._

Slowly, teeth gritted and sweat running rivers down the side of his face, he raised his metal arm and aimed the pistol right at the General.

The General’s eyes widened. His sneer became a gape. And before Bucky could line up his aim properly, the General’s hand dove into his jacket and came out with a small device. He pressed a button on it. 

Bucky’s metal hand clenched suddenly, tightly enough to crush the pistol as if it had been made of flimsy plastic. Every bit of his arm clenched. And the General was backing away, backing away fast, and -

“Bucky!” Steve’s voice screamed in his ear, just before his metal arm exploded and Bucky was blown off his feet. 

He slammed bodily against the wall and slid down to the floor. 

Crumpled. 

His whole body screamed in white hot pain and agony. 

Blood and sweat and grime ran down his face and into his eyes, and he was too broken - too broken now - to do anything about it.

His right hand clutched at his stomach, too afraid to move it away. Too afraid of what it would look like if he did move it.

They had taught him to fear nothing.

He looked up at the General, breath slow and nose bloody, and he wasn’t sure if he felt fear or disgust.

“Steve? Stevie?” He choked the words out. Choked on blood and grime. “I love you.” He took a shaky breath. Licked his lips. [“Natalia? I’ve always loved you.”]

[“Don’t you dare give up.”] Natasha’s voice shook madly. [“Don’t you dare leave me, James. Not now.”]

Steve simply sobbed brokenly.

[“Are you ignoring me, Soldier?”] The General came forward and plucked out Bucky’s earpiece, looking at it the way he might have looked at a cockroach before dropping it to the floor and crushing it under his heel.

Bucky had said the only words that were important though. That was all that mattered. He stared up at the General with narrowed eyes.

[“How touching,”] the General said sourly, looking down at him. [“Saying good-bye to your loved ones. I think they’ll be the first ones I have you kill.”]

[“You said that,”] Bucky breathed. [“You said that last time.”]

[“And I meant it.”] The General knelt down beside him, his black eyes like the empty, hollow eye sockets of a skull. [“You’ll kill them both.”] 

He smiled icily. [“But not for a long time. Ten years from now, perhaps, when I’ve reworked your mind and you’ve had a good long ‘rest’. And I promise you, Soldier, you’ll never feel more ecstatic than you will when you spill their blood.”]

Bucky licked his lips. Focused on keeping his breathing slow and steady.

He had no doubt that the General could make him do those things. No matter how much he had recovered, the General could put him back in the chair as many times as it took, wipe his mind over and over again until he couldn’t remember his own name, couldn’t remember the names of the people he loved, couldn’t even remember that he had needs and wants and desires. 

That he was allowed to have needs and wants and desires past what he had been programmed for.

The broken fingers of his right hand twitched against his stomach.

[“Nothing to say now?”] The General leaned in still farther, looking right into Bucky’s eyes. [“You should have known this was coming, Soldier. You should have known I wouldn’t tolerate your defiance.”] 

Bucky breathed. Said nothing.

The General smiled, his eyes burning. [“And now look at you, Soldier. Beaten. Broken. Barely hanging on.”] He shook his head in disgust. [“Such a waste.”]

“My name,” Bucky said quietly, “is Bucky.”

The General’s hand cracked suddenly across the right side of his face, and his words were quiet and icy.

[“You don’t have a name, Soldier. You don’t have one because you don’t deserve one. All you have, all you’re worth and all you’ve ever been worth, is what I choose to give you.”] Black fire roared in the General’s eyes. [“And if you live to see another day, it’s only because I choose to let you. Is that clear?”]

Bucky looked at him. Took a deep breath. [“Very.”]

He pushed off the wall suddenly and tackled the General to the floor. The man’s head cracked against the hard tile, and Bucky fastened the broken, bloodied fingers of his right hand around the General’s throat. 

[“You stole my life,”] he said through gritted teeth. [“You stole my life.”]

The General reached up with both hands to try to pry Bucky’s hand loose. His eyes had narrowed into slits, white-hot anger replacing his former expression of cold cruelty.

 _“Iktsuarpok!”_ he managed to spit out, a triumphant look of anticipation on his face.

Bucky’s fingers tightened on his throat.

The General’s eyes went wide with shock, and he began to struggle harder. _”Mencolek!”_ he gasped, fighting for air. _”Pelinti! Greng-jai!”_

Bucky pressed down harder, leaning all of his weight into his one broken hand. “Guess all that therapy was good for something.” He spoke around clenched teeth. “Helped my worthless mind more than we thought.”

The General tried to say something else, but all he could manage was a choking gurgle. His face went bright red. His eyes bulged, opened wide enough to show the whites all around his enormous pupils, and they were filled with a strange look that Bucky had never seen there before. 

Fear.

The General’s hands began to slip away from Bucky’s hand. His face went from red to a sickly mottled purple. His bloodshot eyes lost their focus.

And finally, they rolled back into his head.

Bucky exhaled.

The ceiling creaked.

Bucky only just looked up as the ceiling caved in on top of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feed the author.


	39. Golden Retriever of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I can’t leave him.” Steve shook his head, pleading with his eyes. He’d get down on his knees and beg if he had to. “Please. I have to stay here, do you understand? I have to be here for him.”_
> 
> _Natasha’s arm was on his hand suddenly. “Steve…”_

**elsewhere**  
**some time later**

“He’s got to make it, Nat.”

Steve sat there in the hospital chair - which was probably very comfortable but which didn’t register at all to him just then - and felt a horrible numbness gripping his insides. He wrapped his arms around himself and shook his head. 

It couldn’t end this way. Not like this. Not when they’d all come so far, not when they’d succeeded against all odds.

Not this way.

He’d only managed to find the others after the building had caved in. The collapsing structure had left gaping holes through which he and Natasha and Sam and Sharon had clambered. But Bucky had still been down there with Lukin, and Steve couldn’t remember what he’d said to the others to get them to follow him. It must have been impressive, though, because they’d all raced down into the rubble to try to find Bucky while Rhodey’s team looked for other survivors. 

When they’d finally found Bucky - right beside the smashed and very dead body of Lukin - and when they’d levered him out of the debris that had buried him, he’d looked so bad that Steve had collapsed to his knees and sobbed.

He was covered in blood from countless lacerations all over his body. His legs were twisted at unnatural angles. His right hand was broken in several places. His left arm - the seemingly indestructible metal one - was completely missing. Gone, save for the shoulder assembly and a few jagged shards dangling from it. But, incredibly, that wasn’t the worst of it.

Bucky’s face was covered in so much blood that it looked as though he’d been painted a dark red. But a thick, clear fluid was dripping steadily from his nostrils and his ears, cutting tracks through the crimson mask of blood.

Brain fluid, Steve had realized with a horrible wave of nausea. Bucky had brain fluid running down his face.

Steve had cradled Bucky’s limp, broken body in his arms and cried. He’d wept, holding the body of the best friend he’d ever had - the only man he’d ever loved with all his heart - and remembered the last words that had come over Bucky’s earpiece. And that had only made the tears flow harder, until Natasha’s urgent shout had jarred him back into focus.

“He’s breathing!” She’d sounded panicked and relieved at the same time - more emotion than Steve had ever seen from her in any situation. “He’s still alive. We’ve got to move!”

How they’d gotten Bucky loaded onto the Quinjet so fast, he’d never know. Sam had hooked Bucky up to every single emergency medical device on board while Sharon had fired up the engines. Natasha had said something about only being a short distance away from South Korea, and Steve had turned to Sharon.

“Get us there,” he’d said simply. “Whatever this thing’s top speed is, I want us going fifty knots faster.”

“We can bring him to one of the US military hospitals in Seoul,” Sam said. “He’d qualify, and they’d let us right in.”

Steve had considered it for a second or two, which was all the time it took for him to remember that disgrace of a General - Fredricks - at Bucky’s trial. If Bucky were admitted on a long-term basis to a military hospital with injuries like the ones he’d sustained, Fredricks or Thunderbolt Ross or someone like them would simply lay claim to him as government property. And that would be the last they’d see of him.

“No!” he said, more harshly than he should have. He shook his head emphatically. “It’s got to be a public hospital. Nothing military.”

“Boys, relax.” For once, Natasha’s tone didn’t sound at all relaxed. The StarkTech phone in her hand seemed to tremble. “I just spoke to Helen Cho. We’re going to Seoul National University Hospital. They’ll be expecting us.”

In that moment, Steve realized all over again how lucky he was to have Natasha. How much he loved her, and how much both he and Bucky needed her. Then more than ever.

They’d made it to Seoul in fifty-three minutes. It had felt like a year, even if they’d probably broken some kind of speed record. And the hospital was indeed expecting them; a team of doctors was waiting for them on the helipad when they touched down. The turbines hadn’t even begun to slow before Bucky was being bundled onto a gurney and whisked off into the hospital, and Steve was right there by his side the entire time.

Natasha, of course, was right there as well.

Bucky had spent ten hours in surgery. And those ten hours were the longest of Steve’s life.

He’d paced. He’d prayed. He’d wept. So had Natasha, who’d never left his side for the entirety of those ten hours. At one point, they’d ended up holding onto one another and gasping for breath as if they’d been drowning. 

So many hours in - Steve had lost track - Sam and Sharon had approached them both.

“Hey, man.” Sam pushed a cardboard tray of coffee and two boxes of what were probably takeout meals into Steve and Natasha’s hands. “You need to eat something. It’s hospital cafeteria food, but…” He shrugged. “You need to eat.”

“We also got hotel rooms.” Sharon handed Steve a plastic key card - May Place Seoul Dongdaemun Hotel - which he only glanced at before sliding it into a pocket. 

“You probably won’t be using them tonight, but…” Sam folded his arms. “Just in case, you know?”

Steve drank the coffee. He ate what was in the takeout box. He couldn’t remember what he ate, but an empty takeout box sat on the table, so he had eaten something.

At one point, Natasha had leaned her head against the window. “I can’t lose him,” she murmured. “Not again. Not like this.”

“You’ve got to believe, Nat.” He’d come up behind her and put his arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder. “You’ve got to believe he can make it. He’s survived this long, and if the serum’s good for anything, it’s keeping you alive when you ought to be dead.”

She snorted.

He took a deep breath and let it out shakily. “I’m scared too.” His arms tightened around her. “I can’t lose him again either. But that’s why we both need to believe in him.”

And so he sat there in that hospital chair, Natasha by his side, willing Bucky to make it through surgery. To survive the latest in a lifetime of awful things that had befallen him, so they could all go home and breathe a sigh of relief.

At three in the morning - and Steve only knew that because he happened to catch sight of the clock on the far wall - the door opened and a tired-looking woman in a long surgical gown entered.

“Captain Rogers. Ms. Romanoff,” she said. “I’m Dr. Seong.”

“Is he alive?” Steve leapt out of his seat and rushed over to her. “Is he going to make it?”

“He is alive,” she said carefully, “but is in critical condition. He’s in the intensive care ward now, and we will monitor him overnight.”

Natasha sighed, but didn’t say anything.

“I want to see him,” Steve said, his whole body trembling. “When can I see him?”

Dr. Seong shook her head. “You must understand, he’s in critical condition.” She rattled off a list of maladies, but all Steve heard was ‘extensive trauma to the head.’ “... and then you can see him,” she finished.

“Wait, wait.” Steve felt his blood turn to ice as he looked at Dr. Seong with wide and frightened eyes. “Is he going to wake up again? Is he going to know who he is? What about his memory?”

A wave of nausea washed over him and brought tears to his eyes. What if, after all of this, Bucky’s mind ended up being destroyed? What if he ended up losing his memory permanently? What if everything they’d all worked so hard for wound up being gone forever?

Dr. Seong’s eyes were tired, but her tone was kind. “We will see in the morning. In the meantime, I recommend you go and get some rest and a shower.” She gestured to them both, and Steve remembered that he hadn’t changed out of his blood-stained uniform. “There is nothing for you to do right now.”

“I can’t leave him.” Steve shook his head, pleading with his eyes. He’d get down on his knees and beg if he had to. “Please. I have to stay here, do you understand? I have to be here for him.”

Natasha’s arm was on his hand suddenly. “Steve…”

Dr. Seong nodded. “You can stay here if you like, though it is not my recommendation.” She said a few more words - Steve barely heard them - and then it was just Steve and Natasha in the room together.

“I’m not going to be able to sleep,” he muttered as he sat down on one of the hard couches. He’d left his shield propped against the wall, where the doctors and nurses had given it a few curious looks and then left it alone. He buried his head in his hands. “I don’t even think I want to. What if he wakes up? What if…”

He couldn’t finish that question. He couldn’t even finish the thought.

Natasha sat down next to him and leaned her head on his shoulder. 

“Captain Rogers?” a muffled voice said. “Captain Rogers?”

Steve jolted awake - when had he fallen asleep? - and sat upright, looking up into the startled face of a doctor he didn’t remember. Bright sunlight streamed through the window and the waiting room was now filled with several more people, many of whom were giving both Steve and Natasha curious looks.

Natasha was awake and alert next to him. Of course.

“I’m Dr. Kim,” the doctor said, a small smile on her face. “And I think you will be happy to know that Mr. Barnes is in stable condition this morning.”

Steve’s face lit up like a Christmas tree, and he was on his feet in an instant. “I want to see him. Can I see him? Oh, thank you so much, just let me see him, please.”

Dr. Kim stepped back and looked up at him. “You can see him,” she said slowly, “but he is not awake yet. We won’t be waking him up for many days yet. He needs to rest.”

“We’ll let him rest,” came Natasha’s voice from Steve’s right, and he put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her reflexively. “But we need to see him. Please.”

“Very well. Please follow me.”

Dr. Kim led them through the doors and down a long hallway into the intensive care ward, where she made them each put on gowns, caps, masks, gloves, and even paper booties over their boots. 

Steve asked why, and Dr. Kim wrinkled her nose in response. “You’re very dirty.” She gestured to him. “There is even blood on your clothing, and this is an intensive care ward.”

Steve considered reminding her that they’d all very nearly died the previous evening, but decided against it as they came up to the bed in which Bucky was lying.

“Jesus,” he said in a horrified whisper.

Every one of Bucky’s limbs was splinted and suspended in a complex framework of wires and pulleys above the bed. Except for his missing left arm, of course, the stump of which had simply been wrapped in heavy bandages. His head was wrapped in a turban-like bandage, and tubes had been inserted in his mouth and nose. His face was one enormous bruise.

Natasha sucked in her breath. “Oh, James,” she murmured. “Look at you.”

“Jesus,” Steve said again, and brought his hand to his mouth as tears began to sting his eyes.

“We will let you know of his progress,” Dr. Kim said, and a moment later, she ushered Steve and Natasha out of the ward.

“We should go to the hotel,” Natasha said, and Steve didn’t miss the absolute exhaustion in her tone.

Somehow they made their way to the lobby of the hospital. A helpful man at the front desk called them a taxi, and Steve produced the key card to the hotel and showed it to the driver. Five minutes later, they pulled up to a towering high rise that was the May Place Seoul Dongdaemun Hotel. 

The room was clean and comfortable, if nondescript, and Natasha wasted no time peeling off her uniform, tossing it on the floor, and stumbling toward the shower.

Steve dropped the shield by the door, staggered into the room, and collapsed into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. His head was spinning with everything that had happened that day, and he’d been running on adrenaline for so long that he was beginning to tremble. He felt like screaming in anger, sobbing in frustration, collapsing in exhaustion, and sitting there in mute fear all at once. 

He settled for resting his elbows on his knees, hanging his head, and trying to breathe properly.

He wouldn’t have noticed that Natasha had gotten out of the shower if she hadn’t put a hand on his shoulder and gently shaken him. He realized dumbly that he hadn’t even taken off his boots or his gloves, let alone the rest of his filthy uniform.

“Go shower, Steve,” she said simply. 

Her hair was damp and she was clad in a hotel bathrobe. She moved toward the windows and pulled the curtains shut. Steve was already on his way to the bathroom, shedding parts of his uniform as he went.

The hot water pounded down onto him, washing away the grit and blood and soothing the throbbing ache that seemed to have taken up residence in his body. He stood there for a good five minutes before even reaching for the soap, just letting the steaming water cleanse him.

Afterwards, he toweled himself halfheartedly and stumbled out into the bedroom again, fatigue settling like a mountain onto his shoulders. Natasha was already under the covers, curled into a ball and fast asleep, and he dropped the towel and slid into bed beside her. His last conscious act was to wrap himself around her, and then he was asleep.

\---

Blearily, Steve opened his eyes. He hadn’t moved a muscle since falling asleep, it seemed, and neither had Natasha. She lay there in his arms, still asleep as the darkened room slowly came into focus.

He reached for the clock on the nightstand, brought it close to his face, and frowned. The clock must have been wrong. They’d come in a little before noon, and the clock read 8:24 a.m.

“Holy…” His eyes widened, and he set the clock back down on the nightstand before shaking Natasha gently. “Nat, wake up. We slept for almost a day.”

Natasha grunted something and didn’t open her eyes.

“Nat, come on.” He shook her again. “We need to get to the hospital.”

Bucky might have gotten worse, he thought with a lurch in his gut. Or he might have improved. He might have woken up, or he might even have-

No.

“Has the hospital called us yet?” Natasha muttered, cracking open one eye.

“I don’t know.” Steve looked around. “I don’t know how these phones work. We might have slept through it even if they did call.”

“They would have called one of our phones, Rogers,” Natasha mumbled into the pillow. “And we wouldn’t have slept through that.”

He lay back down uneasily, but he couldn’t manage to keep his eyes closed. Or lie still. Or stop thinking that any number of things, good or bad, could be happening to Bucky _right then_ and he wouldn’t know about it because he was still lounging in bed while Bucky was fighting for his life -

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Rogers.” Natasha sat up, her hair a rumpled mess, and looked at Steve with a sour expression. “If there had been _any_ change in James’ condition, they would have called us. Sitting here ruminating on it isn’t going to change that.” Her expression softened and she put a hand on his shoulder. “And you know that.”

“But I should be there.” Steve sat up and leaned against her. “I can’t stand not being there for him. Whether he’s awake enough to know it or not, whether it changes anything or not, I should be there.” He sighed, sliding an arm around her waist. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

“I know.” She slid an arm around his waist. “You’re like the golden retriever of love, and you want to be there for our prickly housecat.”

He looked at her with what must have been the most quizzical expression in the world, if her smirk was anything to judge by.

“So what does that make you?” he finally asked. “If I’m a golden retriever-”

“-of love.”

“-and Bucky’s a housecat-”

“-a _prickly_ housecat.”

“Fine.” Steve gave her a glower that wasn’t much of one. “So what are you?”

Natasha pushed the duvet aside and slid gracefully out of bed. “An otter.” 

“A what?” Steve swung his legs over the side of the bed, remembering as he stood up that he hadn’t bothered to put anything on after getting out of the shower yesterday. “What qualifies you as an otter? Don’t they lay on their backs and break seashells open on their chests?”

She glanced at him and then headed over to a large desk on the other side of the room. “You’re putting much too much thought into this.”

“And you’re putting in way too little.” He shook his head, realizing that he was absolutely naked with nothing to wear except his bloody, grimy uniform. “I’m a golden retriever; okay, I can see that. Bucky’s a cat; yeah, we both agreed on that. But what makes you an aquatic ferret?”

She looked at him for a long moment, raised her eyebrow, and then turned away, saying nothing. When she turned back, she was holding a small bag labeled ‘Capital Exchange’ that she tossed onto the bed.

Steve dug into the bag with a raised eyebrow of his own, coming up with a couple of shirts, a pair of pants, and a few changes of underwear and socks. A pair of sneakers were nestled at the bottom, along with a note:

_Hey, guys. We stopped by the Yongsan Garrison, ‘home of the Capital Exchange.’ Giant shopping mall run by the American military, which means they even stock size beefcake. But of course, we made sure to get a shirt small enough for your liking._

_-Sharon_

He really had the greatest friends in the world, he mused as he felt his throat begin to tighten.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “You really are the golden retriever of love, you giant dork.” She had already begun getting dressed from her own bag of clothing. 

“I love my friends.” Steve couldn’t help but smile what he knew to be a sappy smile as he pulled on his new underwear. “What’s wrong with that, otter lady?”

Over the next few days, very little changed at the hospital. 

Bucky’s condition was still listed as ‘critical but stable’, which kept Steve in a constant state of worry. And which didn’t help him deal with everything else that was going on, most of which revolved around the fact that Lukin was dead and everything about the operation was being scrutinized minutely. 

As the director, naturally, Steve was constantly being called on to give official accounts and answer subpoenas, the majority of which entailed him explaining that Lukin had been crushed under a falling building that had been damaged by explosives set off by his own private militia and HYDRA agents, and which had landed a super-soldier in the hospital with a cracked skull and an encyclopedia of other injuries. 

And he was very pleased when his meeting with representatives of the Russian government turned to their expressing interest in opening an official investigation into the Kronas Corporation, in the wake of Lascombe’s testimony about Lukin. They’d even offered their condolences and best wishes for Bucky’s recovery.

Maybe things would work out for the best after all.

“Crushed under a falling building?” Natasha read Steve’s official report from a tablet. 

They sat in a small restaurant near the hotel, along with Sam and Sharon, eating bulgogi and a host of other small dishes Steve couldn’t even begin to name, despite the waitress’s best, most patient attempts to educate him.

“It’s true.” Steve attacked his bulgogi with a suddenly ravenous appetite, going lighter on the kimchi this time than he had with his rice bowl beforehand. “The whole place came down on us. It’s a damn miracle Bucky managed to survive; Lukin didn’t have a chance.”

He didn’t feel the need to mention that when they’d pulled Bucky from the rubble, his hand had been wrapped around Lukin’s throat. Everyone at the table knew as much, and no one in any official capacity needed to be clued in on that little detail. Especially when Lukin’s battered body had sustained enough damage in the fall to provide ample and obvious evidence of what had caused his death.

“No,” Sam agreed, before using the long metal chopsticks to pluck a helping of some sort of vegetable from one of the side dishes. “He really didn’t.”

“Ah well.” Sharon munched on stirfried eggplant. “He shouldn’t have gone and blown up his own building.”

“He shouldn’t have done a lot of things,” Steve replied darkly, shoveling in the last of his bulgogi and reaching for the cold noodles. 

However much he might have wanted to see Lukin up in front of a judge and jury, disgraced and ruined and exposed to the whole world for the monster he was before being thrown into a hole for the rest of his life, there was a certain poetry in his being done in by his own creation. 

He winced a second later at his callousness for thinking of Bucky as anyone’s creation.

They all ate in silence for a minute before Steve smiled over at Sharon. “I never thanked you for the clothes.”

Sharon shrugged. “Got to keep you outfitted in those ‘smedium’ sized tees you love so much.”

Natasha snorted through a mouthful of cold cucumber salad, but before Steve could think of a retort, his phone rang.

“Captain Rogers, this is Dr. Kim. We are going to try to wake Mr. Barnes now.”

Steve stood up immediately, thanking the doctor and fishing in his pocket for money. He hadn’t quite gotten used to the huge denominations that the won seemed to come in, so he pulled out two fifty-thousand-won notes and tossed them on the table. He hurriedly said goodbye to Sam and Sharon, and Natasha was right beside him as he rushed to hail a taxi.

Dr. Kim was waiting for them when they walked out of the elevator into the intensive care ward. Which Steve noticed was much more heavily guarded - by armed military police, no less - than it had been last time.

The doctor must have caught the looks on both Steve and Natasha’s faces. “Mr. Barnes is a well-known patient, you understand.” 

At least they were members of the Korean military, Steve decided. He wanted the American military nowhere near Bucky.

Dr. Kim stopped in front of the curtained, glass partition, and Steve had to resist moving around her to get right to Bucky.

“Now,” she said, holding up a hand, “you should also understand that Mr. Barnes has only been conscious for about ten or fifteen minutes and that he’s on a very high dosage of diamorphine for pain.”

“Is he all right?” Steve asked, realizing as he said it how profoundly stupid he must have sounded. “I mean, can he talk? Does he know where he is?” He swallowed hard. “Does he remember anything?”

Natasha said nothing, but she put a hand on the small of Steve’s back.

“We don’t know yet,” Dr. Kim said. “Dr. Seong and a nurse are evaluating him now. However,” and again she held up a hand, fixing Steve with a stern look, “we will let you visit him for five minutes, but you will not tell him anything traumatic. He is not ready for that. Do you understand?”

Natasha looked at Steve. Raised an eyebrow. 

“All right,” he agreed, though he wondered silently what he could say to Bucky that wasn’t traumatic. “Thank you so much, Dr. Kim. Can we see him now?”

“Not much,” Natasha muttered to him, as Dr. Kim led them into the room. “Not much at all, so watch yourself, Rogers.”

“How did…” Steve gaped at her. “What are you, a secret telepath or something?”

Natasha smirked. A moment later, both doctors and a pink-clad nurse left the room, and they had Bucky to themselves. For at least five minutes.

Bucky’s eyes were glazed and unfocused, but something like a smile flitted across his face. “Hey… hey, Stevie.” His words were slurred and slow. “Hey…”

The relief that washed over Steve right then was indescribable. He actually felt himself wobble on his feet for a moment. The wobble didn’t take long to travel from his knees to his lower lip, though, and the room began to swim before his eyes.

“Hey, Buck,” he managed in a very unsteady voice as he came forward. “You had me worried there.”

“I think…” Bucky licked his lips, but it took him much longer than usual. “I think a building… a building dropped-”

Natasha shushed him, taking a half step forward and murmuring something in Russian.

Another half-smile drifted across Bucky’s face and he responded in kind, and Steve watched as relief broke out clear across Natasha’s face.

“Guys, come on.” He felt a shaky smile begin to spread across his face. “How many times have I asked you to keep it in English?”

“So many times,” Bucky slurred. “Need to learn Russian, Stevie.”

“Yeah, Stevie.” Natasha smiled. “You need to learn Russian.”

“I’ll start tomorrow.” Steve grinned stupidly through the tears. “I’ll listen to those subliminal language lessons in my sleep. Just get better fast, all right?” He reached down and put a gentle hand on Bucky’s right shoulder. “I want to bring you home.”

“Where…” Bucky blinked slowly once or twice, and it didn’t seem like he’d be awake for very long at all. “Where are we?”

“Seoul, Korea,” Natasha said gently. “When they clear you for solid food, we’ll bring you some bulgogi.”

“Bulgogi,” Bucky repeated slowly. “Bulgogi, okay.”

“You’re going to be fine, Buck.” Steve hadn’t known whether to believe it before, but seeing Bucky had convinced him more thoroughly than he’d been able to convince himself. “Natasha and I are going to be right here with you until they let you walk out of here.” He smiled. “And then we’re all going to go home. Together.”

“Okay,” Bucky breathed. “That sounds nice.”

“Very nice.” Dr. Kim was in the room suddenly, along with Dr. Seong and the pink-clad nurse. “Now we’re going to run some tests on Mr. Barnes.” Before Steve could argue, she held up a hand. “You may return tomorrow.”

Steve didn’t really want to argue with Dr. Kim anyway. In the first place, she’d done so much for Bucky that he was willing to put up with her strictness. And second - and probably more importantly - the diminutive woman looked as though she could get very fierce if pushed.

“All right.” He held out his hands and clasped Dr. Kim’s hand gently but firmly, bowing slightly from the waist. “Thank you so much for everything, Doctor.” He smiled at Bucky. “Get some rest, Buck. We’ll be back bright and early tomorrow morning.”

He spent the ride back to the hotel feeling himself uncoil from the past week’s tension. He hadn’t realized just how much tension he’d been carrying until it left him. Between Bucky’s situation and everything that he’d been dealing with as SHIELD Director, he’d been on near-constant high alert all week. He just hadn’t noticed it until now.

When the hotel room door closed behind him, he took a deep breath and let it out. Natasha stepped in front of him and looked up into his eyes for a moment. 

“Kiss me,” she finally said.

He put his arms around her waist and grinned down at her, the temptation too much to resist. “Because public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable?”

She rolled her eyes. “We’re not in public, you giant dork.” She reached for the back of his neck suddenly, lunged forward, and then her legs were locked around his waist. “Now,” she murmured, lips just touching his. “Kiss me.”

She didn’t have to ask him twice.

He kissed her then, a deep and passionate kiss that felt almost frantic, and one hand went down to grasp her firm behind while the other slid up her spine to tangle his fingers in the hair on the back of her head. 

They stumbled towards the bedroom, stripping off clothes along the way and tossing them aside. He fell onto the bed, Natasha on top of him, and they rolled over and over, hands and mouths all over one another’s bodies. He kissed her hungrily, greedily, while thrusting his hand down between her thighs and groaned pleasurably when his fingers slid inside her effortlessly.

The noises she made weren’t bad either. And his eyes went wide when she reached her own hand down and took a firm hold of him.

She straddled him and slid up and down, painting his throbbing length with her slick wetness, and his mouth hungrily sought out her breasts. And when she bore down on him, enveloping him and letting out a low moan right into his ear, he answered with a throaty groan.

She rode him, her hips moving in quick tight arcs that dragged gasps out of him until he rolled over and pinned her beneath him, thrusting into her deeply enough to make her gasp. And she writhed, locking her legs around him and rolling him over again to bear down on him with all her weight, and they continued until finally her legs were up around his neck and he drove into her as deeply as he could and felt himself burst. Again and again he pulsed, everything inside of him melting into white-hot liquid until he had nothing left and collapsed on top of her, sweat-soaked and winded and smiling dazedly.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke, content to just lay there and catch their collective breath.

Idly she trailed her fingers over his scalp and then down his neck and around, until her fingertips were against his lips. 

“I love you,” she murmured.

He propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her, a satisfied and blissful and completely tension-free smile on his face. She was such a wonderful woman in every possible way, and he realized all over again how lucky he was to have her.

“I love you too, Nat,” he said, and meant it. He’d loved her for a long time, but somewhere along the way he’d fallen in love with her as well.

He smiled, rolling to the side and pulling her along with him in a tight hug. And as they both drifted off to sleep, still wrapped around each other, he realized just how good it felt to be free of the last of that tension.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, your commentary is part of what makes this fun!


	40. A Decent Proposal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky - and the orderly delivering his breakfast tray - both looked up, startled expressions on their faces._
> 
> _“Con-congratulations, Mr. Barnes,” the young orderly stammered and then backed out the room, past a smirking Natasha._

**Seoul, Korea**   
**mid-August 2015**

In the week that followed, Bucky steadily improved. Dr. Seong and Dr. Kim expressed amazement at how quickly he healed from certain injuries, and it wasn’t too long before Bucky was out of splints and casts, though the skull fracture was a more delicate matter. 

He would have to wait until they returned to New York to see what they could do about replacing his metal arm, but Steve had already talked to Tony and T’Challa about that, so at least things could be set in motion.

On the ninth day of his hospital stay, it had become apparent that even if Bucky were still slightly loopy from the pain medication, he was also bored. Judging by the fact that he kept snorting every time the catheter discharged liquid.

Natasha had gone down the street to pick up some bulgogi for Bucky, who’d been cleared for solid foods the previous day. Steve sat by Bucky’s bedside as he usually did, noting that Bucky seemed to be much more active today than he had been for a while. 

“Come on, Buck,” he said for what felt like the hundredth time. “I keep telling you, you’re not supposed to touch your head.” 

Bucky gave him a sour look and then promptly tried to touch his head again. And once again, Steve pulled his hand away.

“It feels weird,” Bucky muttered.

“No wonder.” Steve gave him a stern look. “You’ve got five staples in your skull, plus I don’t know how many stitches. I haven’t even seen it myself.”

Bucky blew out a breath. “Give me a mirror. I want to see what I look like.”

“You can’t see it.” Steve settled back in his chair. “Your head’s all wrapped up in bandages.”

“Fine.” Bucky was silent for a moment, then he pointed to the tube running under the blanket and down the side of the bed. “Look, there it goes.”

Steve couldn’t help but chuckle. “You are way too happy about watching your pee run down a tube.” He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining for you if you weren’t chock full of painkillers.”

Bucky ignored that, instead asking, “Have you and Natasha gotten up to any more fun?” A small smile flitted across his face. “Because hearing about that was plenty entertaining.”

Steve grinned. He and Natasha had walked into the hospital the day after that wonderful stress-relieving session and told Bucky all about it. From behind huge smiles, and in great and lascivious detail.

“Once or twice,” he smiled. “Wanna hear about it?”

“Are we talking about shower sex?” Natasha breezed into the room, a bag of takeout that smelled mouth-wateringly delicious in one hand and a tray of bubble teas in the other. “Because that was some very invigorating shower sex, James. Just so you know.”

“Oh yeah.” Steve grinned again, getting up to help Natasha lay out the food and giving her a quick kiss before sitting down again. “I’m thinking I like shower doors better than shower curtains, by the way. Shower doors don’t fall down from shower sex.”

Bucky’s eyes, despite the painkillers, lit up. “Did you pull down the shower curtain?” He looked at Natasha. “He’s learning.”

Natasha smiled. “He is learning.” She slid the meal tray, complete with a box of bulgogi and side dishes and a bright green bubble tea, across the bed and handed Bucky a set of disposable chopsticks. “He is definitely learning.” 

Steve chuckled and dug in. “It’s a very fun learning experience, I’ve got to say.” He gave Natasha a sly sideways glance. “Even if our neighbors don’t appreciate it nearly as much.”

He’d woken her up in the middle of the night, and they’d wound up getting pretty vigorous. And probably a bit too vocal as well, to the point where the people in the rooms on either side of them had started pounding on the walls.

Natasha smiled into her extremely purple bubble tea. Steve smiled back over at her, the thought striking him that his relationship with Natasha had previously been the least established link in their triangular arrangement. His relationship with Bucky had been extremely well-established, as had Natasha and Bucky’s romance. But lately, his relationship with Natasha had deepened significantly. And he couldn’t have been happier about it.

Bucky shoved a helping of bulgogi into his mouth. “Well, I’d appreciate it. You can do that right here.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow, though a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t think the nurses will appreciate that at all.”

Steve snorted through a mouthful of food at the thought of trying to explain that one to the nurses. “We’d get thrown out.” He shook his head, chuckling. “We’d get thrown out and never allowed back in.”

“Good.” Bucky took a long pull on his bubble tea. “That means we can go home.”

Sam and Sharon had gone back to New York and back to work over a week ago, after visiting Bucky and leaving Steve and Natasha with some more clothing. As SHIELD director, Steve really should have gone back to New York as well, but he’d adamantly refused. For one, he could very easily meet with anyone via holographic conference call if it were necessary. And for another, there was no force in Heaven or on Earth that would drag him away from Bucky’s side at a time like this. 

Unsurprisingly, Natasha had refused to leave either, and so SHIELD was temporarily out three agents.

Too bad. 

“No, Bucky.” Steve gave him an exasperated look. “I meant Natasha and I would get thrown out. You can’t even walk yet, and you’ve still got a crack in your skull. They’re not letting you go anywhere.”

Bucky snorted. “I could steal a motorized scooter and get away.” Off Steve’s look, he smirked and added, “I probably won’t. I’m just saying-”

“‘Probably’, nothing.” Steve gave him a stormy glare. “You’re not getting out of that bed until the doctors tell you to. You’re in bad enough shape as it is; the last thing you need is to make it worse by trying to cowboy around while you’re recuperating.”

“‘Cowboy around’?” Natasha shook her head. “You’re such an old man, Rogers.”

“Hey, he’s the one with the AARP card.” Steve held up his hands, smiling. “And he’s a full six months older than I am.”

Bucky ate another mouthful of bulgogi. “I miss pancakes and waffles and sausage for breakfast. They keep giving me rice and soup here. It’s not bad, but…” He sighed. “It’s not a waffle house. Or our kitchen.”

“I know, Buck.” Steve sighed, leaning forward to put a hand on Bucky’s forearm. He would much rather have stroked Bucky’s hair, but his head was still encased in what had to have been yards of bandaging. He’d have to settle for what was available.

Though Steve did feel a swell of happiness at Bucky referring to it as _their_ kitchen.

“Look.” Steve smiled at him. “I promise, when we’re back home and you’re at a hundred percent again, we’ll spend a whole week hitting up your favorite waffle houses. What do you say?”

“I’d say you’d better take extra long jogs if that’s the case.” Natasha poked Steve’s arms. “After all this inactivity, who knows how quickly you might develop a super-soldier beer gut.”

“Wouldn’t it be a waffle gut?” Steve raised an eyebrow at her. “And besides, he’s the one who’s inactive.” He grinned and tilted his head towards Bucky. “If anyone’s going to get paunchy, it’s the Winter Couch Potato over here.”

“The Winter Couch Potato?” Natasha rolled her eyes and shot a smirk at Bucky. “You can tell her’s very proud of coming up with that.”

Bucky returned the smirk, though it had a certain dazed, drugged quality to it. “Probably took him hours.”

“Completely spontaneous.” Steve grinned, suddenly feeling almost overcome with happiness. He put an arm around Natasha’s shoulders and hugged her, reaching out and giving Bucky’s forearm a squeeze as he did. “I’m good at coming up with things off the top of my head.” He snorted. “Probably too good. I’ve been beat up more times than I can count because of things I’ve said spontaneously.”

“Like that time he told this mook in a picture house to shut the fuck up and got beaten up in an alley for his troubles.” Bucky sipped at his bubble tea, his gaze drifting toward the window. “Night before I shipped out, I think.”

Bucky’s words hit Steve like a freight train. For a moment, he just sat there in stunned silence, his mouth open and a look of astonishment on his face.

In those first three weeks, when he’d brought Bucky home with him to Brooklyn and before HYDRA had gotten ahold of him again, Bucky had occasionally surprised Steve by coming up with a fragment of memory from their childhood, seemingly apropos of nothing. It had given Steve hope at the time - supported his unwavering belief that Bucky could get better.

Since they’d rescued him, though, the only memories that had returned to Bucky had been the ones Jean had uncovered for him. This was the first time since his therapy had begun that Bucky had remembered something entirely on his own.

“You remembered.” Steve said it breathlessly, hardly daring to believe it. A huge wave of elation threatened to burst through what little self-control he still had and make him start actually jumping for joy. “Buck, you remembered! That’s incredible!”

Bucky licked his lips and didn’t meet Steve’s gaze. “Isn’t that the point? Jean said we got past the memory block, so…”

Natasha smiled. “‘Mook’? Are you going to start remembering all of your old-timey slang now, too?”

Bucky shot a glance at her. “Don’t know yet. Maybe.”

“He’s going to start remembering everything.” Steve couldn’t hold back his massive smile of exuberant elation. “Pretty soon he’ll be rattling off the names of all the 1926 Dodgers.” 

“But,” Natasha added, “no pressure.”

Bucky snorted and ate more bulgogi. 

Steve spent the next few minutes on Cloud Nine. Bucky was alive, he’d recover from his injuries, and - probably better than anything - he was beginning to remember things from before the fall. They’d be able to take him home in a couple of weeks, and everything would be fine.

He found himself beaming at that thought.

Everything would be fine.

Of course, the nurse showed up soon thereafter and told them that visiting hours were over, but that did very little to dampen Steve’s good spirits. He spent the majority of that evening with a sappy smile on his face, even though he still had to deal with SHIELD business.

Even so, his work day had to end at some point. And when they got back to the hotel room, he and Natasha managed to steam up the windows pretty well. They went for several rounds, and when they finally finished, he ended up splayed out on his back, a dazed expression on his face,  
body slick with sweat.

“I can see why Bucky says you’ve always amazed him,” he panted.

She smiled down at him like a cat in a seafood store. “Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself. In fact, fucking your brains out has done wonders for reducing my stress levels.”

He snorted, dazed and breathless beneath her. “Glad to know I’m good for something.” He took a deep breath and blew it out again, smiling up at her. She was so beautiful, so wonderful in every way, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed it much sooner. 

He’d fallen in love with her, he thought with a sappy smile. Both her and Bucky. And he couldn’t wait to bring the both of them home again.

“I’m in love with you,” he said contentedly, reaching up to wrap his arms around her. “I’m in love with you, and I’m in love with Bucky, and I never imagined I could feel this way.”

She hummed in contentment against the side of his neck, but when she pulled back to look at him, her eyes were serious. “Why is that?”

“Because it feels like more than anybody ought to be entitled to.” He met her gaze, his smile melting away. “Because I don’t know what I ever did to deserve so much love. The best friend I ever had in all the world somehow turned into my lover, and -” He laughed softly. “- the most amazing woman in all the world somehow turned into my lover too. How do I even begin to give back as much as I’ve been given?”

She looked at him for a long moment and ran her fingers through his sweaty hair. “You’re very sweet,” she murmured. “You really are. And I…” She hesitated. “I feel the same. The luckiest woman in the world. I wake up sometimes and I don’t recognize my life. It’s nice.”

“You deserve it, though.” He brought one hand up from where it rested against the small of her back and gently laid it on her cheek.

After everything that she and Bucky had been through, everything that had been stolen from them, everything they’d been coerced into or simply forced to do, they deserved to be surrounded by love. They deserved to be happy, to be cared for, to be given the very best of everything because they’d already been made to suffer through the worst. If anyone deserved as much, they did.

“You deserve it,” he repeated, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her back down into a hug. “You and Bucky both do.”

An unreadable expression crossed her face. “About that…”

“What?” He looked up into her eyes, sudden worry descending upon him. “What about that?”

She shifted to lay on her side next to him, elbow crooked against the mattress, head propped up in her hand. “I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?” He rolled onto his side, mirroring her posture. He was beginning to feel a sense of apprehensive foreboding. “What’s the matter, Nat? Just tell me.”

“You know that the only reason the doctors let us in to see James every day is because they choose to.” Her eyes searched his. “They don’t have to do that, you know. They don’t even have to let us know of his progress. They choose to, but they don’t have to.”

“What do you mean, they don’t have to?” Steve’s eyebrows lowered in indignation. “We were the ones who brought him in. We’re all he has; of course they have to involve us. Who would they talk to if not us?”

She shrugged. “You’re his legal guardian, but you won’t be forever, and it’s harder to prove outside of the US anyway, unless we came up with the court order or brought his lawyer in.”

Which would entail flying Bernie Rosenthal in from New York.

“And in that time,” another shrug, “a lot of things could happen.”

Steve suddenly felt cold through the middle. The idea that some bureaucrat somewhere might prevent him from seeing Bucky or knowing anything about his condition, for no other reason than that it wasn’t expressly illegal to do it, made him sick. Sick, and frightened.

He didn’t say anything. There really wasn’t anything for him to say.

“So,” Natasha continued, “I was thinking…”

Steve looked up cautiously, one eyebrow raised.

Natasha took a breath. “We should get married.”

Steve had definitely not been expecting that. His eyes went wide for a moment as his brain tried to process the enormity of what Natasha had just suggested. 

But what exactly had she just suggested? Certainly not that she and Steve should get married; he couldn’t imagine how that would help ensure that they always had access to Bucky. Did she want to marry Bucky, then?

“I think you might need to elaborate,” he finally managed.

A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “One of us should marry James. That way, no matter what happens, we’ll always have legal ties to him. No one can just… take him away from us. No one can keep us from him.”

Steve nodded slowly, turning the idea over in his head and realizing that it made sense on every possible level. Not only would they never be prevented from seeing Bucky due to bureaucracy or red tape, but it would probably have plenty of other benefits as well. Like cementing their relationship in the strongest legal manner possible. 

“That’s a great idea,” he said finally. 

“Good.” She leaned forward and pecked him on the lips, then flopped down and pulled the duvet up. “Good night.”

Somehow she was completely out a few minutes later. She really hadn’t been kidding about sex being a great stress reliever.

Steve, on the other hand, couldn’t manage to keep his eyes closed. Knowing that the hospital could simply deny them any information about Bucky - or even access to Bucky himself - kept him on edge. A million different _what if_ s popped up in his mind, all clamoring for his attention, and who could possibly sleep through a racket like that?

\---

“We’re getting married, Buck,” he said by way of greeting as he burst into Bucky’s hospital room the following morning.

Bucky - and the orderly delivering his breakfast tray - both looked up, startled expressions on their faces.

“Con-congratulations, Mr. Barnes,” the young orderly stammered and then backed out the room, past a smirking Natasha.

Two seconds later, the orderly shouted something down the hallway in Korean that Steve didn’t understand at all, though he was fairly certain he heard ‘Captain America’ in there.

Bucky looked at Steve over the steaming bowls of rice and soup. “Right now?”

“No, Buck, not right now.” He shot a glare over at Natasha, who was still smirking, and sat down next to the bed. “But still, we are. Or you and Nat are, or something, but the point is, you’re getting married.”

“Oh.” Bucky shoveled a few bites of rice into his mouth. “Okay.”

Steve had been expecting a far less simplistic response, and he found himself at a loss for what else to say. Natasha, however, had no such difficulty.

“I think he wasn’t expecting you to agree so quickly, James.” She smirked, coming to sit beside Steve. “He was probably looking forward to convincing you, and now you’ve spoiled his fun.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow and looked at Steve. 

“I was not.” He turned to Natasha, giving her another glare. Her smirk didn’t even flicker. “I was just surprised that he didn’t even ask any questions or anything.”

“He did.” Natasha gave a single snort of amusement. “He asked if it was going to happen right now.”

Bucky picked up the bowl of soup, drained off about half of it, and set it back on the tray. “I’m okay with it happening right now. Are we all getting married then?”

“That’s not legal, Bucky.” Steve rolled his eyes at Natasha, then turned to Bucky. “Only two people can get married, otherwise it’s bigamy.”

“That’s legal in some places.” Bucky ate more rice. “Maybe in Utah? I think it’s legal there. And then we can all get married.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s limited to a guy deciding to marry two girls.” Steve put his elbows on his knees. “And the girls don’t get to marry each other, as far as I know, so it’s not really balanced the way we’d want it.”

“I’m also pretty sure the Mormons don’t actually do that anymore,” added Natasha. “What with it being illegal and all.”

“Anyway.” Steve felt the thread of the conversation slipping away from him and tried to get it back on track. “We need to decide which one of us you’re marrying.”

Bucky shrugged. “Go get a priest and let him sort it out. Every hospital has a priest.” 

“No, Bucky.” Steve sighed. “For one thing, the priest would refuse because you’re on a very high dosage of painkillers. And for another, if we’re going to do this, we ought to do it properly. You can’t even stand up yet.”

“You’re still on a catheter.” Natasha glanced down at the bag hanging near the side of the bed in clear disapproval. “I’m not marrying you with a tube in your dick.”

“When you’re better.” Steve said it with finality. “When you’re out of the hospital and we’re all back home, then we can do it.”

Bucky looked at Steve and Natasha for a long moment, then picked up his soup bowl and drained it empty. “So we’ll find a way for us all to get married?” 

“No, Buck.” Steve blew out another sigh. The fact that Bucky was very obviously drugged wasn’t helping the conversation stay focused. “Like I said, that’s not legal. It’s legal for you to marry Natasha, or for you to marry me. But not both of us, and all three of us can’t legally marry each other.”

“What if…” Bucky licked his lips. “You marry Natasha and then she marries me? Or I marry you and you marry her?”

“You’re not understanding, Bucky.” Steve sighed again. “You’re on drugs. Which is why we can’t get married right now.”

Bucky scowled at him.

Steve shook his head and patiently tried again. “Marrying more than one person is bigamy. That’s illegal. And the whole point of this is that when we get married, it’s legally binding, which means a hospital can’t refuse to let us see you or make decisions on your behalf.”

“Which will definitely be helpful the next time you land yourself in the hospital,” Natasha cut in.

Bucky scowled at her. 

“Oh, please.” Natasha gave him a look. “I’m not going to labor under the delusion that this is the last time you’re going to wind up in a hospital.”

Bucky scowled into his rice.

“She’s got a point.” Steve frowned. “You’ve been lucky enough to wind up in the sickbay at the Tower up till now, but that isn’t always going to be the case. We need to count on being able to get in to see you, or to give our consent before anything gets done to you if you can’t consent yourself.” He put a hand on Bucky’s arm. “It’s important.”

“That’s the only reason you want to get married?” Bucky poked at his rice. “In case I end up in the hospital again?”

“Busted.” Natasha smirked. She was getting far too much enjoyment out of this, Steve decided.

“That was the catalyst, yeah.” Steve lifted his chin stubbornly. “But it’s not the only reason. I love you, Bucky. You’ve got to know that by now. And Nat loves you too, and none of us is planning to call it quits on what we’ve got.”

Bucky looked at Natasha.

“Well, I’m certainly not.” She looked back and forth between Steve and Bucky. “I’ve said it before, I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.” A small smile tweaked the corners of her mouth. “And if my boys were married to each other? That might make me feel even luckier.”

Steve turned to look at Natasha, the stunned expression on his face dissolving into a smile of pure gratitude. She’d as good as given Steve permission to marry the man she’d been in love with for decades. And since it was now perfectly acceptable (from a legal standpoint, anyway) for a couple of guys to get married, there was nothing at all standing in the way.

“I keep on finding new reasons to love you, Nat.” He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly. “Thank you,” he whispered in her ear. “Thank you so much.”

“No, thank you.” Natasha returned the embrace. “You brought him back in the first place.” She pulled back, smirking at Steve and Bucky. “And besides, we’re still sharing. You boys are going to have the least monogamous marriage of all time.”

“Can’t we all do it though?” Bucky held up his hand before Steve could jump in. Licked his lips. “Maybe only two of us can _legally_ marry, but all three of us can stand together.”

“Of course.” Steve looked back over at Bucky. “I figured that was the idea anyway.” He looked over at Natasha for confirmation and got a nod in response.

“As if I’d want to stand anywhere else,” she smiled. “As far as I’m concerned, if two of us are married, then all three of us are married. Legally or otherwise.”

“Absolutely.” Steve nodded emphatically. “What works for the law and the state of New York is one thing, but I don’t see any real reason why we couldn’t consider ourselves all married.”

“Congratulations,” Dr. Kim said, entering the room. She beckoned to the door. “Now go. This is not even visiting hours yet, and Mr. Barnes has physical therapy today.”

“Aw, come on, Doc.” Steve looked pained. “We just got engaged.”

“Again, congratulations.” Dr. Kim’s firm expression didn’t waver. “Now if you want him to be able to walk down the aisle, you’ll go. Come back during visiting hours.”

“Come on, Rogers.” Natasha took him by the arm. “He needs to be limber for our first dance, after all.”

\---

After ten days of Korean cuisine, Steve had practically begged for steak and potatoes, and so Natasha found them an Outback Steakhouse for dinner. Ridiculously expensive, of course, but Steve figured that was the cost of eating at what would be considered a fancy foreign restaurant. 

Natasha eyed Steve over the top of her glass of Yellow Tail chardonnay. “You’ve only eaten half of your porterhouse. That’s nearly two pounds of meat right there.” She sipped her wine. “Practically an appetizer for you.”

“I know, Nat.” He sighed and cut himself another slice. He really was hungry - he wouldn’t have suggested a steakhouse if he’d been planning to eat like a bird - but he was also preoccupied. “I’ve just been thinking, you know?”

“Trying to decide if you want to dance the Jitterbug at the reception or try something a bit more modern?” A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “Disco, maybe?”

Steve snorted, his mouth full of steak. “I never learned to dance. I figured I’d let you pick the music and hope I don’t embarrass myself too much.”

His smile quickly faded, of course. His mind had been on much more serious matters, and he knew Natasha knew that. 

“A lot’s changed since I went under, you know?” He studied his beer, watching the tiny bubbles crawl their way up the sides of the glass. “Back when I was younger, a pair of guys couldn’t even have dreamed of going steady, let alone getting married. Nobody ever even talked about it, except in really roundabout ways.” He shook his head. “And there was always this cloud that hung over the subject. Like even talking about it was a sin.”

“Well,” Natasha took another pull on the wine. “Same sex marriage was only legalized in all fifty states two months ago.” 

“But that’s the thing.” Steve shook his head in amazement. “It’s legal. To go from having it be this horrible unspeakable thing that no one even talked about to having it be legal for two guys to get married?” He gave a single breath of bemused laughter. “And now, to be doing it myself? I can’t believe it.”

“And just wait until word gets out.” Natasha sat back in her chair. “There will be quite a few people who can’t believe it, in various ways.”

“Yeah, I know.” Steve gave another snort of laughter, this time with far less good humor. “Like that jackass on the radio I told off when he called Bucky a terrorist.” He shook his head and took another sip of his beer. “I’m going to find myself doing a lot of interviews, aren’t I?”

“Oh yes. Definitely.” Natasha cut into her steak and spent a few moments chewing on a piece, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Now finish your meal, Rogers, so you can go talk to James before evening visiting hours are over.”

He set down his glass and looked across the table at her, a smile coming to his face as he realized all over again just how wonderful she was. How lucky he and Bucky were to have her, and how well she knew them both.

“Thanks, Nat,” he said simply, reaching out to take her hand in his own. “Thanks for -” he paused, then chuckled. “For everything. For being you, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, yada yada yada. Lay 'em on me!


	41. Beekeeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky was silent for a long moment. Long enough that Steve couldn’t help but glance at the vampire doctors frolicking on the TV screen. But then Bucky murmured something that snapped Steve right back to attention._
> 
> _“He’s dead?”_

**not too long after**  
**same evening**

There weren’t many people at the hospital this late during visiting hours. Most of the visitors had gone home for the evening, and Steve found himself almost alone walking down the hallway toward Bucky’s room. The Korean MPs outside Bucky’s door knew him by this point, and he saluted them out of habitual respect, as he always did, before smiling and heading into the room.

Bucky lay in bed watching what appeared to be a Korean hospital drama. There were no subtitles that Steve could see, but it wouldn’t have surprised him at all if Bucky knew how to speak Korean in addition to everything else he’d been programmed for. 

Banishing that thought as quickly as he could, Steve dragged a chair over to the head of the bed and sat down beside Bucky to watch.

“Hey, Buck.” Steve leaned over and kissed him. “Being in a hospital’s not enough for you? You have to watch a hospital show too?” 

Bucky returned the kiss, but his eyes didn’t shift from the screen on the wall. “It’s a different kind of hospital show. It’s about beautiful, young surgeons who are also vampires.” He smirked. “And they’re in love.”

“Bullshit.” Steve gave him a look of wry exasperation. “Nobody would make a show like that.”

Except as he was saying it, the screen showed a close-up shot of the young guy smiling, showing his very pointy teeth obviously to the camera.

Bucky snorted. “You know nothing.”

“About Korean TV producers? Apparently not.” Steve shook his head in amused surprise. “I wouldn’t have given it the go-ahead, I’ll tell you that much. But I guess that’s why I’m not in show business.”

“So.” Bucky licked his lips. “I did physical therapy today. Walked all over the place. No more catheter.”

“Oh?” Steve smiled over at him. “That’s great! Maybe they’ll let you go home sooner than I thought.” 

He hesitated a moment, then thought _Why bother?_ and climbed into bed next to Bucky, careful not to jostle him overmuch and being especially wary of his still-bandaged head.

“Any word on when they’re planning to take the staples out of your head?”

“I thought I might just stand in front of a mirror and yank them out myself.” Off Steve’s stormy look, Bucky rolled his eyes. “They said tomorrow morning after breakfast. So I can have my rice and soup first.”

“Hey, that means it won’t be that much longer before you can go back to waffles and sausage instead.” 

Steve moved close to Bucky in the bed, reaching over him with one arm to give him a gentle hug. Bucky’s left arm not being there made the hug feel strangely different, and Steve found himself very aware of its absence. Which was an odd turn of events, considering how put-off he’d been by it initially.

“So.” He sighed contentedly and leaned his head against Bucky’s right shoulder. “How are you doing?”

Bucky was silent for a long moment. Long enough that Steve couldn’t help but glance at the vampire doctors frolicking on the TV screen. But then Bucky murmured something that snapped Steve right back to attention.

“He’s dead?”

Steve had been avoiding the subject of Lukin ever since Bucky had been in the hospital, for more reasons than he could count or even think of. He’d done plenty of thinking about it himself, of course, especially while writing up his official reports and during his meetings with the Russians. He hadn’t brought the subject up to Bucky, though. And now that Bucky had brought it up for him, Steve found himself glad that he hadn’t needed to do it.

“Yeah, Buck.” Steve’s arm tightened around Bucky. “He’s dead.”

Bucky leaned his head against Steve’s and sighed, breath warm against Steve’s neck. “Did anyone confirm the kill?”

“About a dozen people.” Steve wriggled closer to Bucky. “Me, Natasha, the medical examiners, the Russians…” He sighed. “It was a pretty important operation. Lots of people with something at stake.”

“So then…” Bucky licked his lips. “What happens now? To me? What happens?”

“To you?” 

Steve was confused for a moment. And then he stupidly realized that, because he’d avoided talking about Lukin to Bucky at all, Bucky had no idea that Lukin’s death hadn’t been attributed to him. 

“Oh, jeez, Buck, I’m sorry.” He felt like kicking himself. “I should’ve told you. I’m an idiot.”

He sighed. “The whole building came down on you two. You were broken all to hell, and it’s a damn miracle you pulled through, but Lukin was smashed to a pulp. That was the official cause of death in my report.” 

Steve looked Bucky in the eyes, making sure he understood. “Nobody’s going to blame you, Bucky. Least of all me.”

Bucky looked back at him for a long moment. “Why?”

“Because look at everything he put you through.” Steve gave Bucky another squeeze, sighing as he did. “Look, I’m going to be honest with you here. If I’d had my preference, sure, I’d have loved to see him tried and convicted and exposed to the whole world. And I’d have loved to see him spend the rest of his life in solitary.” 

He sighed again. “But he hurt you, Buck.” He squeezed his eyes shut against the painful memory of Bucky collapsing to his knees amidst the wreckage of his living room and tightened his grip on Bucky reflexively. “Like you said, he stole your life. And I can’t hold it against you for making him pay for it.”

“Then,” Bucky hesitated, “why are there military police outside?”

“To make sure nobody tries to come in and finish you off.” Steve’s expression darkened. “We couldn’t keep it a secret that you were here, and nobody wanted to take any chances when it came to keeping you safe.”

Bucky snorted, but he resettled against Steve all the same. “That’s a twist.” Again his breath tickled the side of Steve’s neck. “Being guarded to keep people from getting to me.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve hugged him tightly. Protectively. “It’s a twist I hope you’ll get used to. You aren’t in the shadows anymore, Buck. You never will be again. That’s all over and done with.”

“Because of you,” Bucky murmured. “You and Natasha.”

“Damn straight.” Steve cradled Bucky against him. “And I don’t regret a thing.”

“You’d better not.” Bucky didn’t look up. “Sounds like you’re pretty much stuck with me.”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way.” Steve felt his throat beginning to close and kissed Bucky gently behind the ear. “I love you, you big jerk.”

Which brought him to the reason he’d come there in the first place. The reason Natasha had urged him to go and speak to Bucky one-on-one.

“Have you been thinking about what Natasha and I said earlier today?” Steve licked his lips nervously. “Because I sure have.”

“All day.” Bucky traced his finger down Steve’s arm and still didn’t meet his gaze. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“No.” Steve shook his head vigorously, then leaned it against Bucky’s again. “But I wanted to talk to you about it one-on-one, you know?” He smiled a shaky smile as the magnitude of it smacked into him all over again. “Since we’d be the ones getting married.”

He was going to marry Bucky, he thought dazedly. He was going to marry his best friend. How many people ever got to say that and actually mean it?

How lucky was he?

Bucky continued to trace his finger up and down the length of Steve’s arm. “That’s pretty wild, huh?”

“I know.” Steve gave a short, breathy chuckle. “I never would’ve guessed it’d be possible.” He gently lifted Bucky’s chin with his finger, until he could look him in the eyes.

“It is pretty wild,” he said with a smile, just before he kissed Bucky on the lips. “But I’m wild about it.”

Bucky looked at Steve for a moment, a small smile flitting across his lips, before he pushed back into the kiss. And after they broke apart, he murmured, “It’s been too long since we’ve done this. Weeks and weeks.”

“It’s been ten days, Buck.” Steve looked at him wryly, even as he gave his cheek a tender stroke.

“It feels like weeks and weeks. Months, even.” Bucky leaned his head against Steve. “I want to go home. Sleep in our bed. Eat our breakfasts.”

“Me too.” 

Steve leaned his head against Bucky’s and hugged him again. It was so good to hear Bucky refer to the apartment as ‘home’, to hear him call it _their_ bed and _their_ breakfast. To hear him say, in his own words and at his own prompting, that he’d reached that level of investment in their shared life.

“It won’t be that much longer,” he murmured into Bucky’s ear. “They’ll keep you here for another few days, if that. And then we can all go home.” He smiled. “Together.”

“And,” Bucky added, “I want a new arm. And that can’t happen until we’re home either.”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem.” Steve shrugged it off. “I’ve already got Tony and T’Challa working on it. It might take a few weeks before it’s ready, but it’s in the works as we speak.” He chuckled. “I don’t want you all lopsided either.”

Bucky snorted. “Want me whole and hearty before we get married?”

“Absolutely.” Steve hugged him again, then grinned. “And off the drugs. We’re not getting married while you’re loopy on whatever the hell they’ve got you dosed up with.”

“But hey,” Bucky nuzzled his face into Steve’s neck, “no more catheter.”

“A definite bonus.” Steve closed his eyes and smiled. “Now all we’ve got to do is get the staples out of your skull and we’re home free.”

\---

“You think he’s going to be surprised?” Steve grinned at Natasha as they exited the elevator the following morning.

“Probably not for long.” Natasha responded with her patented two-millimeter smile. “If at all. But I’m sure he’ll be pleased.”

Steve opened the door to Bucky’s room and found Bucky sitting up in bed. The bandages were gone from his head. And so was his hair - his chin-length curls had been shaved away until only stubble remained.

“Staples are gone.” Bucky rubbed his hand over his head. “And my hair. But they did let me have rice and soup first, just like they promised.”

“Sorry about your hair, Buck.” Steve sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his own hand over Bucky’s stubble, being careful to stay far away from the still-healing wound. “I’d actually gotten to like it long.”

“It’ll grow back.” Natasha sat down on the other side of the bed with a smile, tracing her fingernails over Bucky’s scalp. “And in the meantime, we can rub his head for good luck.”

Bucky leaned into her hand and closed his eyes. “Like people do with the Laughing Buddha at Jade Garden?” 

Which was their favorite Chinese takeout in Red Hook. And yes, it did feature a giant, bronze Laughing Buddha figure.

“I think they rub his belly, James.” Natasha kept scratching and smiled over at Steve. “But we can do that for you if you want.”

“You can rub my belly,” Bucky murmured.

“What belly?” Natasha gave him a wry smirk. “You mean your super-soldier beer gut?”

“Waffle gut,” Steve chuckled, still rubbing. “Nah, it’s more fun to rub his head. Like the magic lamp in that _Our Gang_ short.”

“I wish I had a watermelon,” Bucky mumbled, eyes still closed and a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I wish I had a big watermelon.”

“You remembered.” Steve gaped, looking over at Natasha. “Nat, he remembered.”

Bucky scowled. “ _He’s_ sitting right here.”

“I get the feeling _he’s_ going to be doing a lot of that from now on.” Natasha smiled, her fingertips meeting Steve’s on Bucky’s head.

“Isn’t that incredible, though?” Steve shook his head in amazement. “I haven’t seen that thing since I was a kid.”

“Less gaping.” Bucky settled back against the mattress, which had been configured so he could sit up. “More rubbing.”

Steve met Natasha’s eyes for a second, and they exchanged a brief conspiratorial smile. They’d come in that day with a plan, after all.

Natasha settled down onto her side, propping herself up on one elbow alongside Bucky and continuing to scratch gently at his scalp. Steve, meanwhile, leaned over to give Bucky a kiss while still rubbing his stubbly head.

“So are you feeling better?” He smiled down at him. “Pretty much healed up?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said with the air of someone who wanted less talking, more rubbing. “Did more walking this morning. Dr. Kim and Dr. Seong said they’ll probably discharge me day after tomorrow.”

“Oh good.” Natasha had lain down next to Bucky and let her fingernails scratch a path down to the side of his head, just around his ear. “You’ve only got another seventy-two hours of boredom ahead of you.”

“Which is one of the things we’re here to help you with,” Steve smiled as he trailed his fingertips along Bucky’s cheek and down to his collarbone.

Bucky shivered in response, another smile ghosting across his lips. 

“We missed you, James.” Natasha curled up along Bucky’s left side, reaching across his body to entwine her fingers with those of his right hand. “And we’re both looking forward to bringing you home.”

“But,” Steve grinned up at Bucky as he trailed his fingers down the front of Bucky’s hospital gown. “As long as you’re here…”

Steve slid down lower on the bed and lifted up the front of the gown. And with a single significant look back up at Bucky and Natasha, he pulled the sheet over his head and took Bucky into his mouth.

Bucky’s sudden, barely stifled gasp of surprise was more than enough encouragement for Steve.

“Oh yes,” Natasha whispered. “We really are looking forward to bringing you home. And we wanted to give you a little reminder of what you have to look forward to.”

Steve decided to mind his manners and not talk with his mouth full. After all, he thought with a wicked smile as he worked on Bucky, Natasha would have plenty of fun doing the talking for him.

Bucky shifted slightly and sucked in his breath. Usually around this time, he would have tangled his fingers in Steve’s hair and encouraged him to keep going, but Natasha was still holding his hand.

“You don’t want to make too much noise now either,” she murmured. “After all, you don’t want the nurses to come running, do you?”

“No,” Bucky just managed, and sounded very breathless indeed.

Steve could just imagine it. ‘Oh no,’ he’d say to the mortified nurses and the glowering Dr. Seong, ‘this isn’t what it looks like.’ Except it would be exactly what it looked like, and Steve wouldn’t be able to deny it. And he and Natasha would wind up getting kicked out of the hospital a bare couple of days before Bucky was set to be released.

So they’d just have to keep it quiet, that was all. Quiet and quick.

“Steve’s mouth gets him in trouble a lot,” Natasha murmured into Bucky’s ear, “but it’s pretty good at other things. Don’t you think?”

Bucky came with a quiet cry right then and there. And Steve, grinning like the proverbial cat with the canary, didn’t stop what he was doing until Bucky sagged back against the mattress.

“And that’s just a warm-up,” Steve whispered as he came up from under the sheet, licking his lips and resting his hand against Bucky’s cheek.

“I thought you’d go for the obvious line,” Natasha smirked. “‘That was just a taste’ would have been much more your style.”

“Damn.” Steve mentally kicked himself. “You’re right; I should’ve thought of that.”

Still, he was pretty proud of himself for making it as quick as it had been. And that self-satisfied grin wasn’t going to leave his face anytime soon.

“It’s been a while,” Bucky said, as if he knew exactly what that grin meant.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “James, it’s been twelve days.”

Bucky nodded. “Like I said, it’s been a while.”

“Well, you get to come home in two days.” Steve’s grin didn’t falter an inch. “I wonder what’s going to be on your mind until then?”

\---

Two days later, Bucky was discharged from the hospital wearing the nondescript clothing and baseball cap Natasha had picked up for him at the Yongsan Garrison Capital Exchange. He rarely wore short sleeves, usually preferring to cover his metal arm, and the absence of said arm only seemed more glaringly apparent in his new, short sleeved Old Navy t-shirt.

Dr. Kim stood with them on the helipad, waiting for the Quinjet to land. (And she wouldn’t let Bucky up out of the wheelchair until then either.)

“Now Mr. Barnes,” she said, “do be careful in New York. Please wait until you have a new arm at least before continuing your dangerous lifestyle.”

“I’m retiring after I get married.” Bucky smiled faintly. “And taking up beekeeping.” 

Natasha raised an eyebrow and exchanged a glance with Steve.

“Well,” Dr. Kim patted his shoulder, “that’s good. More relaxing, I think.”

“Beekeeping?” Steve turned to Bucky once they were all aboard the Quinjet and heading towards New York. “You don’t know a thing about beekeeping. Neither of us do. We grew up in the city. How are you going to raise bees?”

Bucky shrugged. “If I could learn to be the ‘world’s deadliest assassin’, I’m sure I can learn how to keep bees.”

“Buck, you had decades to learn that crap.” Steve glowered at him. “It’s not like you can just learn to keep bees as you go.”

“I’d imagine the bees do most of the work themselves, honestly.” Natasha crossed her legs and smiled over at them. “They’re pretty famously industrious.”

Bucky smirked at him. “There you go.” A moment of silence, then, “Or I could be a househusband. I could learn to cook, and every day you’d both come home to a warm meal and a clean house.”

Steve raised an eyebrow at him. “Were you really serious about retiring?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky shrugged. “Things are… they’re different now.” His expression turned solemn. “I have things to think about.”

“Well, you’ll be going back to therapy this week,” Natasha said. “I’ve already let Dr. Levitt and Darien Nash know. So that might be a good place to start.”

Bucky nodded once. “Maybe.”

A lot went through Steve’s head just then. Was retirement really the best option for Bucky? On the one hand, he’d been through so much that maybe he deserved a different lifestyle. But on the other, what kind of a life would he really be satisfied with? Certainly not beekeeping, and however enticing it might have sounded, probably not being a househusband either. Was there really anything else Bucky could do with his life that would make him happy in the long run?

And that was another complication, wasn’t it? 

The vast majority of Bucky’s life had been spent learning and perfecting the craft of violence. Whether it had been as a kid getting into fights in the back alleys of Red Hook, as a soldier and a Howling Commando in the war, as the Winter Soldier under the Soviets or HYDRA, or as an agent of SHIELD under Steve, Bucky had been a fighter nearly all his life. Almost all of his skills revolved around it. Would he be able to acquire an entirely new set of skills to live a completely different life? And would his old habits always be waiting just below the surface, looking for an excuse to come out?

And that wasn’t even mentioning the good Bucky could do as an agent of SHIELD, or even as an Avenger. Would it be the right choice to give up that life, if it meant that he wouldn’t be there to fight for people who needed it? Would a different life simply be a waste of Bucky’s abilities?

But maybe - Steve thought as he looked over at Bucky - these were the wrong questions to be asking. Or, more to the point, he was the wrong person to be asking them. Hadn’t the point of all the therapy been to give Bucky back enough of himself that he’d be able to make his own choices? Decide for himself how best to live his own life? In the end, wasn’t it all supposed to be Bucky’s decision?

And so Steve didn’t say any of what had been running through his head. All he did was nod his head once in agreement and smile.

“Let’s go home,” he said with a contented sigh, “and we’ll figure it out there. Together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST: The show that Bucky is watching is 'Blood', a Korean drama from 2015 that aired for 20 episodes!
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND: Feedback is the bulgogi of life.


	42. Good News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky shook his head. “He’s such a fucking troll.”_
> 
> _Natasha snorted, but she couldn’t hide the smile on her lips either. “Well, the media’s going to go crazy with this. We’ll be hearing sound bites for days.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just like the MCU's taught us, stay for the end credits!

**Red Hook, Brooklyn**  
**August 2015**

“Captain Rogers, sir?”

Steve jolted awake, his eyes bleary and his neck sore. He’d fallen asleep on the ride over from Seoul. Since they weren’t in a life-or-death rush, the pilot had kept them at subsonic speeds, and the trip had stretched out to seven or eight hours. Which was still better than a commercial airliner’s ETA of thirteen hours, but it did leave time for a long nap.

Bucky had dozed off pretty quickly and Natasha had curled up next to him. As for Steve, he didn’t know exactly when he’d fallen asleep, but he’d clearly been out for hours.

“What is it, son?” He fought back a yawn and rolled his head back and forth to banish the stiffness in his neck.

The pilot barely stifled a grin. “I thought you might like to know that there are reporters in front of your building.” 

Natasha was awake suddenly. “News travels fast.”

“Reporters?” Bucky was instantly alert, his expression quickly turning into a frown. “For what?”

This time, the pilot didn’t hide his smile. “Well, I’m pretty certain they want to hear all about the good news.”

Bucky’s frowned deepened. “What good news?”

“That you’re alive.” Steve smiled and stretched. “That you’re all right, that you’re back home, and that it’s all going to be okay.”

Bucky stared into his lap, and Steve hated to see him curl in on himself like that. “I don’t think…” He licked his lips. “I doubt that’s the reason.”

“Well, they also want to hear about your impending marriage,” the pilot said cheerfully.

Natasha looked at Steve and raised an eyebrow.

“It’s been all over the news for days,” the pilot continued. 

“Wait, what?” Steve’s eyes went wide, and his head swiveled around to look at the pilot so fast that his neck twinged painfully. “What news? How did they know? How come I haven’t heard anything about this?”

“It was all over Korean Twitter?” The pilot glanced at him. “And then _ONTD_ picked it up-”

“ONTD?” Steve said sharply.

“ _‘Oh No They Didn’t’_ ,” Natasha provided. “It’s a celebrity gossip site, Steve.”

“Yeah.” The pilot nodded. “And then it was on _Entertainment Weekly_ , and it even got a mention by Stephen Colbert, and then before you knew it, the news was everywhere.”

Bucky said nothing.

“I don’t think I like being a celebrity,” Steve muttered. “Especially if something a Korean hospital orderly posted on Twitter makes a flock of reporters show up at my door.”

The pilot’s smile widened. “So it’s true then?”

“That depends.” Steve raised an eyebrow at the pilot. “Are you on Twitter?”

“Yes, it’s true,” Bucky said suddenly. “We’re getting married. Steve and I are getting married. I’m marrying Captain America.”

There was a moment of silence, then Bucky added, “We’re very gay.”

“Bisexual, technically,” Natasha said gently. Steve simply gaped.

“That’s a new word to me, but fine.” Bucky took a breath. “We’re getting married.” He looked at Steve. “If we are, then it’s good news. I don’t want to hide it.” 

Quietly he added, “I don’t want to hide everything anymore. Wasn’t that the point?”

Steve looked over at Bucky with a wobbly sort of smile. “That was absolutely the point.” He reached over across the Quinjet’s center aisle and grasped Bucky’s hand briefly. “And I don’t want to hide it. You know how happy I am about it. I just wasn’t expecting to come home with you and find a bunch of gossip columnists camped out on my doorstep just waiting to interview me about it.”

Natasha entwined her fingers with Bucky’s. “We don’t have to talk to them, but if you’d like me to, I will.”

“Something tells me they’re not going to be interested in talking to you before they talk to me.” Steve looked down, chuckling. “They’re going to want a Captain America headline and a bunch of quotes.” He looked back over at Bucky and Natasha. “Which should keep the two of you safe, I guess. So you go inside and settle in while I give them their interview.”

The pilot glanced over at Steve. “Want me to land on the roof? And then you can dramatically leap down to the ground and talk to the reporters while Agent Romanoff and Agent Barnes go inside?”

Natasha smirked. “Someone has you pegged.”

“I wasn’t going to leap.” Steve looked sourly over at her. “I was going to take the stairs. Or at least the fire escape.”

Bucky snorted.

“What?” Steve turned back to Bucky. “I was. I don’t go around just jumping off buildings.”

“No,” Natasha agreed. “Usually he waits until he’s trapped in a glass elevator before smashing his way through it and plummeting twenty stories.”

Bucky looked at him, his expression an almost comfortingly familiar mixture of shock, outrage, and exasperation.

Before Steve could reply, the pilot chimed in: “So did you want me to land on the roof? Because I’ve circled the neighborhood no less than ten times now and I think it’s making people nervous.”

Steve put a hand over his face and sank down into it. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Please do.”

A moment later, the pilot landed the Quinjet on the roof of the condominium. Natasha grabbed the one suitcase she had bought to carry the little bit of clothing they had picked up in Seoul, Bucky took Steve’s shield, and the two of them disappeared through the service door on the roof.

But not before Natasha pecked Steve on the cheek and murmured, “Have fun.”

“Oh yeah.” Steve snorted. “Absolutely.”

For a moment, he actually did consider leaping down from the roof and landing dramatically in the midst of the reporters, but rationality won out. And so, after jogging down a few flights of stairs, he opened the front door of the building into a blizzard of flash bursts, a forest of hastily-thrust-out microphones, and a tsunami of shouting voices.

“Hold on.” He raised his hands with his palms out, having to raise his voice as well to be heard over the cacophony of questions from all sides. “Hold on, everybody; I’ve got something to say.”

When the hubbub had died down a bit, he took a deep breath and blew it out. “First of all, I should probably let you all know that I hadn’t really wanted the news to break on Twitter first. But yes, I am getting married.” Another deep breath. “To my best friend, Bucky Barnes.”

The wall of reporters exploded into another frenzy of questions and flashing lights.

“How did you propose?”

“Is it true you proposed at a hospital in South Korea?”

“Do you have anything to say to our LGBTQ youth?”

“Hold it, hold it.” Steve raised his hands again. “One question at a time.” He looked around uncertainly at the sea of faces, finally pointing to a young woman with warm brown skin and a ponytail of dark hair. “Go ahead, miss. You asked a pretty interesting question.”

“Thank you, Captain. I’m Lupita Espinosa with _Out Magazine_ ,” she said. “We focus on issues that impact the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. And I’d like to ask if you have anything to say to our LGBTQ youth who are now hearing that one of the country’s most recognizable heroes is marrying a man?”

Before Steve could answer, the reporters started shouting again.

“Are you gay, Captain Rogers?”

“When did you realize you were gay?”

“How long have you been involved with Sergeant Barnes?”

“One at a time!” Steve was beginning to feel overwhelmed. He held up his hands again and waited for the shouting to fade. “Please.”

This was turning out to have more of an impact than he’d thought it might. 

“First of all, let me answer Miss Espinosa’s question. I don’t know if it’s going to be a very satisfying answer, but I’ll do my best.” He took another deep breath. “To be honest, I’d never really thought of myself as a spokesman for the LGBTQ community. I just figured out that I love somebody who happens to be a man. I wasn’t trying to make a statement. But I do love him, and if hearing that gives anybody else the courage they need to find love in their own lives, then that can only be a good thing.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd, followed by another explosion of rapid-fire questions.

“Does Sergeant Barnes identify as gay?”

“When’s the wedding date?”

“How long have the two of you been together?”

“Pretty much our whole lives.” Steve decided to answer the last question. “I mean, it didn’t turn romantic or anything like that until pretty recently, but the few parts of my life that haven’t had Bucky in them have been the darkest parts, no question.” 

Someone in the crowd murmured something that sounded like “aww.”

He breathed a shaky sigh, thinking of all the times in school when Bucky had tried to set him up with girls, each failure simply spurring Bucky on to try harder next time. Thinking of the one time on the beach in Coney Island when Bucky, after a few beers, had slung an arm around Steve’s shoulders and kissed him. Thinking of the hole that had appeared in his heart as he’d watched Bucky fall from the train. And thinking of how there really was no clear delineation between their friendship and their relationship - no boundary where one ended and the other began. 

Their first kiss had been, in hindsight, long overdue. And he honestly couldn’t have said how long beforehand his feelings for Bucky had developed, because it had been such a gradual thing that nothing had felt different from one day to the next.

“Captain, one more question-”

“No.” He held up his hand and shook his head. “No more questions right now. We all just got back from Korea. Bucky was treated for a severe injury there, and he’s got to rest. I’ll try and give a proper press conference sometime in the next couple of days, but right now, I’m sorry. It’s been a long couple of weeks for everybody.”

Still, before he went back inside, something urged him to say one last thing.

“Oh, and Bucky and I are both in a relationship with Natasha Romanoff.” 

He lifted a hand in farewell and pulled the lobby door shut behind him just as the uproar burst.

\---

The moment they had gotten inside the apartment, Natasha dropped the suitcase, pulled Bucky over to her, and turned on the intercom connected to the lobby door. They listened to the entirety of Steve’s improvised press conference that way. 

_“Oh, and Bucky and I are both in a relationship with Natasha Romanoff.”_

Bucky shook his head. “He’s such a fucking troll.”

Natasha snorted, but she couldn’t hide the smile on her lips either. “Well, the media’s going to go crazy with this. We’ll be hearing sound bites for days.”

Steve’s footsteps were loud down the hallway, and then he pushed the door open, a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Well,” he said, all but rubbing his hands together. “I think that went well.”

Natasha looked him up and down. “Maybe that Espinosa person will get in touch with you and put you on the cover of _Out_.”

“Then you’ll really be the face of the L… Q… B…” Bucky shrugged. “All those letters. You’ll be the face of them.”

“I wasn’t prepared for that.” Steve shook his head. “I guess I didn’t realize what a big deal this was going to be for everybody else.”

Bucky turned and headed into the living room. “Is that a bad…” His voice trailed off and his eyes went wide.

“James?” Natasha came up behind him, her hand going to the small of his back. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Bucky murmured.

A large, colorful Edible Arrangement sat prominently on the table, and next to that was a smaller, homemade looking fruit and chocolate basket. But that wasn’t all. The entire living room/dining room was covered in flowers and cards and balloons and even a few stuffed bears.

“I think…” Bucky glanced at Steve. “I think people want to congratulate you.”

“No, Buck. I don’t think so.” Steve looked at the notes on the fruit baskets. “The Edible Arrangement’s from Sam and Sharon.” He read the small card aloud. “ _Hey man. We enjoyed the Arrangement you sent all those months ago, so it only makes sense you get a turn at one. Make sure to share with Steve and Natasha. Or don’t. You look like you could put a lot of fruit away yourself. Sam and Sharon._ ”

Bucky looked at Steve, trying to find words and failing.

Steve plucked the card from the homemade fruit and chocolate basket and read that one aloud as well. “ _Dear Bucky. Why spend $100 on a store bought arrangement when you can just carefully make one yourself? The answer is because this took me six hours, a lot of fruit, and two pots of melted chocolate. Also I had to call Carol to help me, and she made me listen to girl bands from the 90’s. So you better share this with me. I have missed you. Wanda._ ”

Bucky licked his lips and stared at the floor. 

“Bucky.” Steve picked up a handful of cards and held them out to Bucky, his eyes misty and an unsteady smile on his face. “These are all for you.”

“For me?” Bucky didn’t take the cards. “Why would they be for me?”

Natasha had moved into the room and was looking in awe at the cards and flowers. She smiled and picked up one of the stuffed bears, whose left paw was made of a silvery fabric and who had been dressed in black. “People care about you, James.” She held the bear out to him. “More people than you think.”

“Aw, it’s a Bucky Bear!” Steve smiled sappily. “Look at his little metal paw. Somebody made this for you, Buck.”

After a long moment, Bucky took the bear from Natasha. He licked his lips. Found his voice somewhere. “Why?”

The bear had been carefully constructed, down to its mock Neoprene jacket and boots made out of some shiny material Bucky couldn’t name.

“Why would anyone do this?”

“Because people see you now.” Steve put his arms around Bucky and leaned in, their foreheads touching. “People see you doing better. They see you winning out against all odds. And if you can get better, then that means there’s hope for them too.”

“You’ve got all the support you’ll ever need, James.” Natasha was there suddenly, her arms sliding around both his waist and Steve’s. “A lot of people want to see you recover.” She hugged them both. “A lot of people care about you.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say to that. At all. But he could close his eyes and lean his forehead against Steve’s and wrap his one arm around Natasha’s waist. He could close his eyes and breathe in the scents of the two people he loved most in the world. 

He was glad to be home.

\---

That evening, they ordered food from Turvino’s, watched a weird picture called _Tron: Legacy_ , took showers, and then piled into bed together.

The reality of having only one arm was sinking in more now that Bucky was out of the hospital. Showering had taken longer and pulling on his pajamas had been a hassle. Natasha had bought him a pair of Vans slip-on sneakers in Seoul, but if had to run anywhere, he’d be screwed. And he wouldn’t be in the field for a while either. 

If he wanted to be in the field anymore at all.

He was glad to be home, and he was especially glad to be back in their bed - the three of them squished together, and Steve mentioning that he needed to ask Tony where to commission a custom-made extra king size bed - but sleep didn’t come.

At all.

At two in the morning, he was still staring at the ceiling. 

He glanced at Steve, who was somehow sleeping with a peaceful expression on his face. He shifted to look at Natasha. Her eyes were closed, but it looked more like she was trying to will herself to sleep rather than actually sleeping.

He reached out and stroked her hair.

[“You can’t sleep either?”] she whispered, a small smile stealing onto her face. She opened her eyes a second later.

[“Think I’m still on Korean time,”] he murmured. [“Time for lunch, and I’m hungry.”]

[“What a surprise.”] The smile spread to the corners of her eyes. [“You being hungry. Who ever would have guessed it?”]

[“You’re hilarious.”] He shifted so that he was hovering over her, planted a quick kiss on her lips, and then got out of bed. [“I’m going to eat the rest of your penne vodka.”]

He didn’t have to look behind him to see her follow him into the kitchen. Or to see her sit down to watch him get the food out of the icebox. But when he came to sit at the table, she was there.

[“Lot on your mind?”] She’d gotten him a fork and a napkin, and now she reached out and touched his hand briefly. [“It’s been that kind of a day.”] She frowned. [“That kind of few weeks, actually.”]

He grunted in response to that and ate a few bites of the pasta in silence, but if he had wanted to keep things from her, he wouldn’t have checked to see if she were awake.

[“I meant what I said down there.”] He poked at the penne. [“Before he took my earpiece away. I meant what I said.”]

[“Oh, James,”] she murmured, coming over to stand by him and gather his head and shoulders against her. [“I know you meant it.”] She wrapped her arms around him and kissed the top of his bristly head, close to his healing wound. [“I’ve loved you for what feels like forever. You were the first real bright spot in my life.”]

[“And you were the only one,”] he said quietly, closing his eyes. [“For a long damn time, you were it. You were everything.”]

She was silent for a long moment, tracing her fingers lightly over the gash in his skull, before she finally spoke again.

[“You came so close,”] she whispered in a strangely unsteady voice. [“So close to being taken away from me forever.”]

For a moment, he said nothing. It was true, wasn’t it? And yet…

[“I’m still here.”] He shifted slightly, looking into her beautiful eyes. [“I’m right here, eating your pasta.”]

The words hovered right at the edge of his lips, and he took the plunge.

[“No matter how many times they’ve tried, I’ve always found my way back to you.”]

[“I love you.”] She stroked his cheek, a haunted look in her eyes, and then brought her lips to his with passion. [“I couldn’t have gone through losing you again,”] she murmured after she broke the kiss. [“It would have broken me.”]

[“I’m right here.”] He pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arm around her waist. [“I’m not going anywhere.”]

He didn’t bother countering her statement. She had never been one for hyperbole, and they had always been the most open with each other under the cover of night.

A small smile drifted across his face. [“I have to follow all those damn rules, remember? I’m not going anywhere.”]

[“And neither am I,”] she smiled, wriggling closer to him on his lap. [“Someone has to make sure you follow all those damn rules, after all.”]

[“Yeah, between you and Steve,”] he glanced meaningfully down the hallway, [“I’m pretty much all set.”]

That wasn’t a bad thing at all.

\---

“So,” Sam looked at Steve over the top of his soft shell organic fried fish taco, “Captain America’s marrying his childhood sweetheart while carrying on a steamy affair with the Black Widow?”

Steve shrugged elaborately and took a bite of his own organic free-range chicken enchilada. “Technically, it’s not an affair if all of us are in on it.” He chewed and swallowed. “And I don’t know if Bucky really counts as my childhood sweetheart. But for the most part, yeah. You’re right.”

“Man, I didn’t come up with that.” Sam set the taco down, wiped his hands off, and pulled out his phone. A few taps later, and he slid the phone across the table to Steve.

 ** _CAPTAIN AMERICA IS MARRYING HIS CHILDHOOD SWEETHEART!_** screamed the headline, while a slightly less huge line below finished the thought with **_...While carrying on a STEAMY affair with the Black Widow!_**

“It’s the way they wrote it in red that really says ‘journalistic integrity’,” Sam offered thoughtfully as he took a bite of his taco. Steve, for his part, simply shook his head and stared.

“Guess that press conference really needs to happen soon,” was the best he could come up with.

Sam shrugged. “You want to feed the beast, go for it. They’ll come up with news about this one way or another.” 

“Probably.” Steve looked sourly at the headline again, then pushed the phone back across the table to Sam. “But at least I can get the real story out there instead of giving them free rein to just make stuff up for lack of facts.”

“As if that ever stopped anybody.” Sam polished off the fish taco and started on the next one. “Though there was a good article that called you a role model for LGBTQ youth.”

“Yeah.” Steve smiled. “I remember the girl who asked me about that. Maybe I should go to her for an interview.”

“You should. If you’re up for it.” Sam looked at him. “That would mean a whole lot to a lot of kids out there.” A beat, then, “A lot of adults, too.”

“Yeah.” Steve picked up his glass of iced tea and looked at it for a moment, then set it down and stared off into space, thinking.

He hadn’t considered becoming a role model for relationships, same-sex or otherwise, much less becoming a spokesman for an entire community of people, but that hardly mattered. He read the news; he was aware of the hardships that that community faced. Some of the things they’d had to endure - still had to endure - were positively criminal. And what good was being Captain America if he couldn’t make some kind of positive difference in the lives of a group of people who were every bit as American as anyone else?

The fact that that group of people included him only occurred to him as an afterthought.

“Steve?” Sam broke in suddenly. “You kind of went away there.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.” He brought himself back to reality and focused on Sam again, and something occurred to him out of the blue. “You know, I never got to thank you for what you did back in Siberia.”

Sam shrugged and chewed on a mouthful of fried fish. “No problem.”

It had been Sam, while Steve had been clawing desperately at chunks of rubble and Natasha had been searching in vain for something to use as a lever, who had taken charge of the rescue operation. And with his pararescueman’s skills, he’d been the one to organize them. Bucky had survived thanks to Sam, and that wasn’t something that could be brushed aside with a simple ‘no problem’.

“I owe you one, Sam.” Steve spoke as sincerely as he ever had. “Bucky might have died if it hadn’t been for you. You’re a good man, and I’m proud to know you.”

Sam chuckled and shook his head. “Well, just invite me to the wedding and make sure there’s lots to drink, and we’ll call it even.”

“Want to be in the wedding party?” Steve smiled, taking another bite of enchilada. “You’d be the first one we’ve asked.”

“I get to be in Captain America’s wedding party, huh?” Sam raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Guess that’s the definition of making it. There better be some good pictures.”

“I don’t have a photographer yet.” Steve shrugged.”I’m just kind of making this up as I go along.”

Sam started on his third and final fish taco. “I’m sure there are plenty of photographers out there who would be more than happy to photograph your wedding.” A beat, then, “And sell the pictures to the press for half-a-mil each, so you’re gonna want to find someone you can trust.”

“I don’t even know any photographers.” Steve paused, his fork halfway to his mouth, as Sam’s advice sank in. “Let alone a photographer I can trust not to sell me out. This is going to be a fun wedding to plan.”

Sam sat back in his seat and regarded Steve for a moment. “Bet if you asked yourself seventy years ago what your wedding would you be like, you wouldn’t have come up with any of this.”

“Not at all.” Steve shook his head. “Though seventy years ago, I would have said that any wedding at all would have been a bonus. This is just more icing on the cake.” He winced. “I’m going to have to find a baker too.”

“You’re going to have to make a whole list.” Sam took another bite of fish taco. “When my sister got married, she went all out, had a gigantic wedding, had all five hundred of her sorority sisters in the wedding party.” He snorted. “And I’m only slightly exaggerating. But she had a list, and I don’t think that wedding would’ve gone as smoothly as it did without that list and her ironclad commitment to making us all follow it.”

“Well then.” Steve took another bite. “Looks like I’ve got some work to do.”

\---

“It really took six hours?” 

“And I had to call Carol to help me.”

Bucky and Wanda sat on the living room floor, basket of homemade chocolate fruit on the coffee table next to them. Usually they would have gone out to find food somewhere, but navigating a motorcycle with one arm wasn’t something Bucky was willing to try yet. So Wanda had come via Uber instead, and she had brought a large plastic box of nail polish stuff.

“So I guess buying them really is easier?”

“Yes. But I have discovered I like the Spice Girls.”

Wanda had worked on painting her toenails while they talked, and when she was finished, she asked Bucky if he wanted his toenails painted too. She was currently painting them a very dark shade of blue.

“Seems legit.”

Wanda looked up from Bucky’s toes and smiles. “‘Seems legit’? Where did you hear that?”

Bucky shrugged. “Cultural osmosis.”

“You’re learning.” She bent her head and resumed painting his big toe. “You’re doing so much better than when we first met.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.” She blew lightly against his toe. “You wouldn’t have let me do this when we first met, and we wouldn’t be sitting here, eating homemade chocolate fruit and listening to En Vogue.”

“Want to be in my wedding?” Bucky asked suddenly.

Wanda didn’t even look up. She had started on the next toenail. “Yes, of course.”

“Okay then.” 

Bucky reached for a chocolate strawberry. Nineties’ music continued to blare from Wanda’s phone as she carefully worked on his toenails.

Life was okay.

\---

“So remind me.” Natasha cocked an amused eyebrow at Clint. “Why are we hanging out at a 7-11 again?”

“Because this is the only 7-11 in Brooklyn that does Surge Slurpees.” Clint stood at the Slurpee machine, filling the biggest available cup with vibrant green slush. “It’s very highly caffeinated and really, really sweet, and probably the reason I’ll die before I’m fifty, but it’s so good, Nat.”

“Laura’s going to be mad at me for letting you put that into your body.” Natasha couldn’t help but shake her head and smile. “She expects me to look after you, and I’m not doing a very good job.”

She poured herself a cup of herbal tea. Maybe it would balance out somehow, and her healthy choice would counterbalance Clint’s spectacularly unhealthy one.

Clint didn’t even glance at her. “Grab me two of those key lime pie donuts, would you?”

Clearly not.

“So,” she said once they were outside, sitting side by side on the concrete parking bumper. “Read any good tabloid headlines lately?”

“Nah.” Clint ate one of the key lime pie donuts in two bites. “Been too busy working and playing _Euro Fishing_ with the boy on my downtime.”

She looked at him, her expression never changing, waiting for him to inevitably crack.

“Cooper really likes it,” Clint continued, licking lime green frosting off his fingertips before starting on the next donut. “Nate’s still in that ‘trying to cram the controller into his mouth’ stage, so I don’t think he really appreciates the advanced gameplay and graphics.”

Of course, there was always the potential for a very long wait.

“Did you want Lilah to be a flower girl, by the way?” Clint took a long pull on his Slurpee. “Or has someone else been cast in the role?”

“Nobody’s been cast in anything yet, as far as I can tell.” Natasha chuckled. Finally, the real conversation could begin. “Rogers is probably going to want Sam for his best man and James is definitely going to want Wanda to be in there somewhere, but nothing’s official.”

“So…” Clint frowned. “Who is marrying who, exactly?”

“Well, from a purely legal standpoint, it’ll just be the boys.” She sipped her tea. “But we’ve already talked about what happens between the three of us, and we’re all happy to consider it a triangular marriage.”

“Just the boys,” Clint echoed. “And you’re happy with that? This what you want?”

“Well, I wish it were legal for all of us to get married.” Natasha sighed. “Not going to lie. But this is more than I ever thought I’d get out of life, Clint. You of all people know that. And if I get to have James with me forever, and I get to have Rogers into the bargain, what does it matter if my name’s not on the paper?”

“But is it what you _want_?” Clint pressed. “Are you happy?”

“Happy?” She looked at him quizzically. “Clint, you know how much I love James. You know what I went through after Odessa. You know what that did to me.” She closed her eyes for a second, letting the painful memories wash over her and recede. “And you know what getting him back meant to me.”

Clint sipped at his Slurpee.

Natasha waited.

Finally he said, “Last time we talked - and I mean _really_ talked, back at the house in June - you had barely figured out how to tell Barnes you were still in love with him. And now you’re telling me that not only are you marrying him, you’re also marrying Steve? How did he figure into this suddenly?”

“Rogers?” A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth and eyes. “That man would make the worst spy in the world. He doesn’t know how to not say every single thing he’s feeling.” She sighed, shaking her head. “He went through the same thing I went through with James, pretty much. Losing James was enough to send him on a suicide mission more than once, and it was obvious to everyone except the two of them that something more than friendship was going to happen between them.”

Her small smile returned as she thought of the two of them. So absolutely in love, and so absolutely clueless about how to proceed with it. 

“We both love James, and he loves the both of us, and it wasn’t right to ask him to choose. So we didn’t.” The smile became a smirk. “Or I didn’t, anyway. Rogers would never have come to it himself.”

Clint shrugged. “Love is love is love, huh?”

“I guess it is.” She shrugged, still smiling, and breathed a contented sigh. “I never would have thought I’d wind up being this lucky.” 

Her smile slipped as that familiar dark cloud of worry billowed into her mind, bred by a lifetime of being taught to expect the absolute worst. She’d never considered being this lucky, a sharp little whisper in her brain hissed, but she’d never in her life had this much to lose. 

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m too lucky.”

“You?” Clint shook his head. “No.” He looked at her. “No, Nat, if anything, you’re finally getting back pay on all that happiness you’re owed.”

“That’s the conventional wisdom, yeah.” She smiled over at Clint, knowing the smile didn’t quite make it to her eyes. But she couldn’t force it. She’d never been able to bring herself to put on a false front with him. 

He was family. 

“And that’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect someone who cares about me to say.” She sighed again. “But I’ve never been in a position where so much could be taken away from me before. And it’s damn scary when I think about it for too long.”

Clint pulled on his Slurpee, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Yeah, that’s marriage for you,” he said after a moment. “Damn scary and a helluva ride.”

She looked over at him, the worry beginning to melt away. Clint had plenty to lose himself. Far more than she did, if she bothered to think about it - he had the kids. And yet he’d never paused to consider how much he had to lose; instead, he’d taken the steps he’d needed to take to safeguard his family. And - maybe more importantly - he’d done his job even more zealously than he had before. Because he had something worth protecting. Something worth the long hours and the danger and the fear.

Maybe that was the answer.

“It’s worth it, though.” She nodded, then nudged him with a smile. “Right?”

“Oh hell yeah.” Clint popped the dome off the Slurpee cup, downed the rest in a long gulp, and sucked in his breath with a wince. “Brain freeze. But yeah, Nat. It’s worth it. It’s always been worth it.”

“Well then.” She took another sip of her tea and smiled again. “I’ve got to believe it’ll be worth it for me too.” She raised an eyebrow. “Doubly so.”

\---

Steve lay there in bed with Bucky’s head resting on his chest and Natasha curled around Bucky front-to-back. The sun had long since set, and the room was lit only by the neon light that filtered in from outside. The Thai food they’d had for dinner rested comfortably in his stomach. Half a container of green curry chicken over rice sat in the refrigerator, but he was willing to bet it wouldn’t last the night. Bucky would get up sometime past midnight, stumble into the kitchen to devour it, then topple back into bed.

“You know, we should really start ordering dinner with leftovers in mind.” Steve chuckled, rubbing his hand over Bucky’s bristly scalp. “Or at least more than one midnight snack.”

“Cabinet’s looking empty,” Bucky murmured. “We need to stock up on snacks. I miss fried cheese waffles.”

“We’re not going back to BeNeLux anytime soon.” Natasha trailed her fingers over Bucky’s back and shoulder and onto Steve’s stomach, then back. “You may have to settle for something else.”

“You might get a mission there.” Bucky nuzzled his face against Steve’s chest. “You could pick me up some fried cheese waffles while in Bruges or Rotterdam or wherever.”

Bucky’s choice of words wasn’t lost on Steve. The thought hadn’t fully sunk in yet that he and Natasha might be out on missions while Bucky was home recuperating. It would be at least a month before his replacement arm was ready, after all, and probably another couple of weeks at minimum after it was completed and attached before he’d be ready to head out into the field again. 

And that wasn’t even taking into account the fact that Bucky’d said he wanted to retire. Steve still wasn’t sure how he felt about Bucky possibly never accompanying him into the field again.

“That can’t be the only thing you’d want from Bruges.” Natasha snorted. “I’d take real Belgian chocolate over fried cheese waffles any day.”

“I want fried cheese waffles as a wedding present.” Bucky sounded like he was moments from sleep. “That’s what I want.”

“If I can find some.” Steve kissed Bucky’s head, then grimaced. “And you can be sure I won’t eat any on the way.”

Whatever worries he might have had about Bucky’s future were a long way off, he told himself, and what was happening right then was more important. Bucky was alive. He was safe, he was there, and the three of them were going to get married. 

That was what mattered, Steve thought with a smile.

Everything was going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAND SCENE! 
> 
> NOTE THE FIRST:  
> If you've followed this story from Project Regenesis to now, thank you. If you jumped into this story cold and stayed for the ride, thank you. If you've left comments and kudos, thank you thank you thank you. Please know that I've appreciated each and every one of them. I reread comments often. I smile at every kudos. 
> 
> Both stories have been a lot of fun to write. I've enjoyed getting into the characters' heads and figuring out their journeys. But honestly, what makes this even more fun is the comments I get from readers. Interacting with y'all turns this solitary activity into something incredibly fulfilling. 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND:  
> So as it turns out, I have one more sequel (threequel?) left in me. After all, there's a wedding to plan, several dangling plot threads to resolve, and a beekeeping hobby for Bucky to cultivate. I tentatively aim to start posting in October-November. 
> 
> I'm calling it _Buck Rogers in the 21st Century; Or, the One Where They Get Married._
> 
> Hope to see you there!
> 
> UPDATED APRIL 2018: As it turns out, I had enough material for two sequels, so I divided them. You can read the sequel to this, _Golden Oldies_ right now!
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD:  
> In the meantime, if you're interested in reading any of my other ongoing stuff, there's my ongoing Rogue One fic ( _Sergeant Erso's Lonely Hearts Club Band_ ), my new Spider-Man fic ( _A Little Light Protesting_ ), and the next installment of my 1930's Stucky flavored smut with feelings ( _Under the Chenille Blanket_ ) is due to be posted in a few weeks. 
> 
> Happy reading!


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